Justia Vermont Supreme Court Opinion Summaries

A.M. was born in October 2011 to parents who admitted to their struggle with substance abuse. A.M. was taken into emergency DCF custody in June 2013. In its petition alleging that A.M. was a child in need of care or supervision (CHINS), DCF indicated that A.M. had been found in a motel room with parents in the presence of heroin and drug paraphernalia. The court issued a temporary-care order on June 4, 2013 transferring temporary legal custody of the child to DCF, and A.M. was placed with his maternal grandmother. A.M.'s Mother appealed the trial court’s disposition order continuing legal custody of the minor child A.M. with the Department for Children and Families (DCF). She argued that the court erred by failing to take evidence on whether the disposition plan should be amended to include reunification with A.M.’s maternal grandmother as a third concurrent goal. Mother contended that the court should not have taken judicial notice of a prior ruling concerning grandmother’s unsuitability to provide even temporary care for A.M. Based on these assertions, mother argued that the court’s order was unsupported by any findings. Finding no reversible error, the Supreme Court affirmed. View "In re A.M." on Justia Law

R.B. was born in September 2008; O.B. in December 2009; and K.C. in September 2011. In August 2012, the Department for Children and Families (DCF) filed a petition alleging that the children were in need of care or supervision (CHINS) because they were without proper parental care. The court found it best to place the children with relatives if possible, and determined that the children's father's cousin Kristin and her wife Tammy Hall could take proper care of the children, at least in the short run, while work was done on a disposition plan. It was ultimately recommended that the children be placed for adoption, and the parental rights to both parents be terminated. The trial court found that Mother suffered from Munchausen’s disorder and Munchausen’s disorder by proxy. The court could not find that mother was likely to recover from these disorders at any particular time. It found no reasonable probability that mother could resume her parental duties within a reasonable period of time. Father was unwilling or unable to take over responsibility for the children’s medical care and appointments and ensure that recommendations and plans provided by DCF were implemented. As of the date of the TPR hearing, father continued to live with mother and had not developed the parenting and other skills needed to care for the children safely. It would be impossible, the court explained, for father to care for mother, protect the children, meet all of their needs, and support the family. Father was unemployed at the time of the hearing, although he was receiving some money for his work as a caretaker for mother. The parties received state benefits, which were barely sufficient to meet their financial needs. Finding no abuse of discretion in terminating the parents' rights to the three children, the Supreme Court affirmed the termination decision. View "In re R.B., O.B. and K.C." on Justia Law

Mother appealed the parent-child contact and property division orders in a final divorce decree that assign her sole parental rights and responsibilities with regard to the parties' children. On appeal, she argued that the trial court was bound to consider findings of fact made by the presiding magistrate at a temporary hearing and that the court's findings did not support its conclusions. After consideration of the trial court's decision, the Vermont Supreme Court concluded that at the final hearing the trial court was not bound to consider the findings from the temporary hearing and that its decision regarding parent-child contact was clearly supported by the evidence. Mother's other arguments failed because there was no clear error in the court's findings, and the findings reasonably support the court's conclusions. View "Frazer v. Olson" on Justia Law

In this parentage action, the family court, in a 2006 order based on the parties' stipulation, assigned physical rights and responsibilities to mother and ordered father to pay mother $175 per month in child support. Because the new order contemplated that the minor child would spend well over thirty percent of nights with father, the parties stipulated to a new child-support order pursuant to the shared custody guidelines. In November 2008, after father was disabled in a motor vehicle accident, the family court issued a modified child-support order, again based on the parties' stipulation, that did not require either party to pay child support. In November 2010, mother, as representative payee, received from the Social Security Administration a $4370 lump-sum derivative disability benefit for the parties' son representing a twenty-three-month period between when father applied for and was granted the derivative benefit. The ongoing derivative benefit was initially $190 per month and had increased "modestly" since then. In a second appeal to the Vermont Supreme Court, father argued that the magistrate and the family division of the superior court erred on remand by not awarding him a credit for the entire lump-sum derivative Social Security Disability Insurance benefit given to mother as representative payee for the parties' son, by not imputing income to mother, and by granting mother a deviation from the child-support guidelines calculations. Finding no reversible error, the Supreme Court affirmed. View "LaMothe v. LeBlanc" on Justia Law

The issue this case presented for the Supreme Court's review centered on Vermont's statutory residency requirement for filing a divorce action. Husband Dain Gosbee filed for divorce in 2013. His wife Christina was living in Germany at the time with the parties' minor child. When he filed the divorce complaint, husband also filed a motion to establish parentage and a motion for a temporary order requiring wife to facilitate his telephonic or Web-based video communication with the minor child. Husband was born and raised in Vermont. The parties met in 2002 and began living together in Berlin, Vermont, in 2005. In 2007, the parties bought a home in East Montpelier. In 2009, their child was born. In March 2010, the parties sold their East Montpelier home, put some of their furniture in storage, and moved in with wife's parents at their home in Barre. Later that year, wife's parents moved to Germany, where wife's father worked as a civilian contractor with the U.S. military. In October, the parties decided to join wife's parents in Germany so they could "work, travel and save money." Their hope was to return to the United States when they had saved enough money for a down payment on a house. The parties never intended to relocate to Germany or another foreign country on a permanent basis. Neither ever applied for German citizenship or a permanent work visa. In Germany, the parties did not live on a U.S. military base. After the parties' return to Germany after their September 2011 wedding, husband found work in Germany. In June 2012, husband returned to Vermont to pursue an internship. Wife and the minor child followed a few weeks later. The internship did not work out, and the parties returned to Germany in early October 2012. The minor child has not been back to Vermont since that time. Prior to husband's filing for divorce, the parties had spent approximately four years in Germany. Husband returned to Vermont on October 7, 2013, five days after wife had begun German divorce proceedings, and moved in with his father. Husband did not buy property or sign a lease since returning to Vermont. He had not found full-time work. Husband expressed uncertainty about where he would reside after the divorce, and indicated that he might return to Germany if that was the only way to maintain regular contact with the child. Based on these facts (and others), the trial court concluded that husband was not a resident of Vermont at the time he filed the divorce, and therefore, it lacked jurisdiction over the proceedings. The Supreme Court agreed with the trial court's analysis of the facts, and affirmed the dismissal of husband's divorce action on grounds that the residency requirement was not satisfied. View "Gosbee v. Gosbee" on Justia Law

In a September 2013 order that disposed of father's motion to modify his child-support obligation, a magistrate found that father paid child support while mother also received a social security disability insurance (SSDI) derivative benefit on behalf of the parties' child through father's own SSDI benefit. The magistrate cited Supreme Court precedent in "Louko v. McDonald," (22 A.3d 433), for the proposition that father could credit the derivative benefit against his child-support obligation. A family court judge affirmed the magistrate's order, also citing "Louko." Mother appealed, arguing "Louko" did not apply. Finding no reversible error, the Supreme Court affirmed. View "Rathbone v. Corse" on Justia Law

Father Eric Merchant and mother Sheila Merchant married in 2000. They subsequently had two children. The parties separated in 2008, and in August 2009 the superior court issued a stipulated final divorce order providing for shared physical rights and responsibilities for their children and a contact schedule allocating fifty percent of the children's time to each parent. The stipulated order provided that each party would bear the cost of child-care expenses for the children during those times that the children were with them pursuant to the contact schedule. It further provided that mother would be entitled to claim the minor children as dependents for state and federal income-tax purposes. The child-support-obligation guideline calculation was $112.52 per month from father to mother. The guideline calculation, which was attached to the final child-support order, took into account the parents' respective qualifying child-care costs. Father agreed to an upward deviation from the guideline amount, to $200 per month plus $43 per month in arrears, which would automatically rise to $243 per month when the arrears of $1852 were paid (after forty-three months). At issue in this appeal, father challenged the findings and conclusions of the family-division magistrate, as affirmed by the Superior Court, denying his 2011 motion to modify the 2009 child-support order. Finding no reversible error, the Supreme Court affirmed. View "Merchant v. Merchant" on Justia Law

For eight or nine months following the birth of their son, the parties involved in this dispute lived together in an apartment connected to the home of the child's maternal grandfather in Springfield. In the fall of 2012, mother asked father to leave the apartment, and father moved into his parents' home in Chester. In this parentage action, father appealed the superior court's decision denying, based on the absence of changed circumstances, his motion to modify parental rights and responsibilities with respect to the parties' son following mother's relocation with the child to the State of Georgia. Finding no reversible error after review of the superior court's order, the Supreme Court affirmed. View "Falanga v. Boylan" on Justia Law

The parties in this case were arguing over child support. Parents to a daughter born in 2006, the mother argued that the family court erred in calculating the amount of the father's income for purposes of determining his child support obligation. Specifically, she argued the court should have imputed income father earned from property sales made in 2008 and 2010 from a business in which he held an interest. The Supreme Court reviewed the family court record and concluded the court did not err in calculating the father's income. Accordingly, the Supreme Court affirmed the family court's determination. View "Patnode v. Urette" on Justia Law

Father appealed the trial court's award of sole legal and physical parental rights and responsibilities to mother. He also appealed the court's calculation and division of marital assets, challenging the application of a hypothetical real-estate commission in awarding father a portion of the martial home's equity as well as the trial court's division of the parties' retirement assets. Mother cross-appealed the trial court's parent-child contact order on grounds that the order did not achieve its stated goal and was not in the best interests of the parties' child. After review, the Supreme Court affirmed the trial court's order except its application of the hypothetical real-estate commission in a scenario in which no sale is contemplated, which was reversed. View "MacCormack v. MacCormack" on Justia Law