Divorce; Custody; Proper cause & a change of circumstances (COC); Vodvarka v Grasmeyer; Burden of proof; Lieberman v Orr; Best-interest findings; MCL 722.23; Change of school

Finding no error requiring reversal, the court affirmed the trial court’s “order declining to modify its previous custody ruling, modifying the parties’ parenting time, and denying” plaintiff-mother’s request to change the children’s (MC and AC) schools. Plaintiff first argued the trial court erred by finding that defendant-father established proper cause and a COC permitting reconsideration of the custody arrangement. The trial court found both proper cause and a COC “because of the children’s long morning commute from plaintiff’s home in New Baltimore to their schools in Rochester. Although plaintiff disputed the length of the commute, defendant asserted that it took approximately an hour to travel from New Baltimore to Rochester. The distance meant that the children would have to wake up substantially earlier to travel to school from plaintiff’s home than they would have been required to do when plaintiff resided in Rochester. Under the then-existing custody order, this disruption in the children’s schedules would affect the majority of their school mornings.” The court held that considering “MC’s and AC’s ages—then 13 and 11, respectively—the reduced sleep and attendant fatigue presented a risk to their academic performance, thereby implicating best-interest factor (h) (home, school, and community record), MCL 722.23(h), at minimum.” Although plaintiff believed that her move “was a normal life change that did not significantly affect the children’s well-being, we are unpersuaded that the trial court’s contrary opinion was against the great weight of the evidence in light of the deference the trial court’s finding is afforded on appeal. The record before the trial court at the time of its decision did not clearly preponderate in the opposite direction.” Also, the trial court did not err by holding that “the new parenting-time schedule left the children’s joint custodial environments intact.” Thus, its determination “that defendant’s proofs did not rise to the level of clear and convincing evidence did not render its decision legally erroneous. The burden of proving that the change served the children’s best interests remained with defendant and that burden was by a preponderance of the evidence.” Further, the court rejected plaintiff’s arguments as to the trial court’s best-interest findings and concluded that the findings were not against the great weight of the evidence. Finally, the court held that viewed in the context of its “detailed analysis of the best-interest factors, the [trial] court did not err by declining to provide a duplicative assessment of the statutory factors focused only on the proposed change of schools.”