Custody; Findings on the statutory best-interest factors (MCL 722.23); Factors (b)-(f), (h), & (j)-(l); Award of sole legal custody; MCL 722.26a(1)(b); Contempt for violating trial court orders; Alleged inability to comply; Distinguishing McBride v Mathews (Unpub)

The court held that the trial court’s findings on all but one of the challenged statutory best-interest factors were not against the great weight of the evidence, and that the one error “was harmless in relation to the trial court’s overall determination that” defendant-father having sole custody was in the best interests of the parties’ child (JCS). The court also rejected plaintiff-mother’s claim that the trial court abused its discretion in “holding her in contempt for violating its orders” because she could not comply with them. Thus, it affirmed the order awarding defendant sole legal and physical custody of JCS and holding plaintiff in contempt. The court determined that the evidence did “not clearly preponderate against the trial court’s findings as to” Factors (b), (c), (d), (f), (h), (j), (k), and (l). However, as to Factor (e), which “‘concerns the permanence of the household, not its acceptability[,]’” the court noted that while “plaintiff did not provide the trial court with updated information about her housing situation, the record reflects that JCS had lived with [her] in the same place for more than a year. This is in contrast to defendant, who had recently moved, and JCS had never lived in his new home. Therefore, JCS had more permanence with plaintiff. Nevertheless, any error in this respect is harmless, because the trial court’s other findings regarding the other contested factors supported its overall best-interests conclusion.” As to the award of sole legal custody to defendant, the trial court “discussed plaintiff’s repeated exclusion of defendant from participating in, and making decisions regarding, JCS’s life, including situations involving JCS’s education, medical treatment, and religion. Thus, [it] did ‘clearly articulate’ that sole legal custody was appropriate on the basis of the best-interest factors and its finding that plaintiff could or would not cooperate with defendant in making decisions about JCS’s welfare. The evidence does not clearly preponderate against this finding.” Finally, as to the contempt ruling, the court found that the “impossibility plaintiff cites as the basis for her violation of the trial court’s orders was one of her own making[.]”