Parenting time; Whether the parenting-time order modified the established custodial environment (ECE); Marik v Marik; Legal custody; Adequacy of the trial court’s factual findings

Rejecting defendant-father’s claims that the parenting-time order modified the child’s (H) ECE and deprived him of legal custody, and concluding that the trial court’s factual findings were not against the great weight of the evidence and were adequate to support the order, the court affirmed. When the parties divorced, plaintiff-mother received primary physical custody of H and the parties had joint legal custody. There was no formal custody order. Defendant generally exercised two nights of parenting time a week. When H reached school age, “defendant filed a motion in the trial court seeking three weekends a month and week on, week off parenting time in the summer. The court ordered that defendant would have parenting time every other weekend from Friday night until Sunday night and the parties would split custody equally during the summer, and” it implemented a stipulated expanded holiday schedule. Reviewing his ECE modification argument for plain error, the court noted that before the custody order, H was with plaintiff apart from the two nights a week defendant had custody. “That, for the most part, continues to be the dynamic.” While he cited cases where “the parties initially had 50/50 custody,” he never had close to the amount of parenting time that plaintiff had. Their roles in H’s “life remain essentially the same, and there was not a significant reduction in the total amount of parenting time that defendant received” considering the holiday and summer schedule. As to legal custody, nothing in the record supported his claim he was “stripped in any way of decision-making authority” as to H. His assertion that the schedule gave him fewer opportunities to assist her in her education “conflated legal custody and physical custody.” Finally, the trial court “was not required to consider the custody factors because the order did not modify the” ECE, and its failure “to consider the parenting-time factors does not warrant reversal because ‘it was clear from the trial court’s statements on the record that’” it considered H’s best interests in modifying parenting time.