Justia Vermont Supreme Court Opinion Summaries

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

In February 2004, the Department for Children and Families (DCF) determined that petitioner K.R. placed her son T.F. at risk of harm, and it included her name on the Child Protection Registry. This determination followed a reported 2003 overdose on a controlled substance. In 2011, an independent administrative reviewer accepted the substantiation, and the Human Services Board upheld this decision. In its review, the Board found the social worker's testimony credible in setting out DCF's history with petitioner, DCF's concerns about petitioner's drug use, and the reasons for the substantiation. The social worker also kept contemporaneous case notes detailing the history of her interactions with petitioner, which the Board found corroborated her testimony. Petitioner argued to the Board that DCF failed to meet its burden of proof. She asserted that any information regarding her interactions with DCF after the 2003 overdose were irrelevant pursuant to Vermont case law. She stated that she did not place T.F. at risk of harm because he was not in her care on the day that she overdosed. Petitioner argued on appeal to the Supreme Court that that the hearing officer impermissibly found that "the Board can take notice of information documenting the effects on those using Oxycontin including impaired judgment," and that those effects "can compromise a person's ability to parent resulting in placing a child at risk of harm." She contended that the mere use of illegally obtained regulated drugs could be a per se ground for substantiation. The only order on appeal was that issued by the Board, and the Board expressly declined to adopt the finding that petitioner challenged on appeal before the Supreme Court. After review, the Supreme Court found the Board's findings did not support its decision: without any evidence that T.F. was actually at risk, petitioner could not be found to have failed to mitigate a risk to her child by failing to comply with DCF's recommendations. Th View "In re K.R." on Justia Law

The issue on appeal to the Supreme Court in this case centered on a father's obligation to pay college tuition for his daughters pursuant to a Pennsylvania child-support order. The parties, father Frank A. Scopetti, Jr., and mother Kimberley Marie Scopetti, were married in Pennsylvania and had two daughters. They entered into a separation agreement in 1998, when their elder daughter, Indie, was six years old, and their younger daughter, Francesca, was five years old. The separation agreement was a two-page, handwritten document. Paragraph 4 of the agreement provided: "Frank Scopetti agrees to provide college tuition for Francesca and Indie [at] an institution acceptable to Frank Scopetti." The separation agreement was incorporated into a final decree of divorce issued in Pennsylvania in 2000. Following the parties' divorce, mother and the daughters moved to Vermont, and father moved to Arizona. On September 28, 2010, mother registered the parties' Pennsylvania support order in Vermont. That fall, Indie began studying at George Mason University (GMU) in Virginia. During the 2010-11 school year, father paid only a portion of Indie's tuition. Father appeals the trial-court order requiring him to pay specified college-tuition costs for his two daughters. After review of the trial court order, the Supreme Court found no reversible error and affirmed. View "Dyke v. Scopetti" on Justia Law

Mother appealed a family division superior court decision terminating her parental rights with respect to her son, C.F. She argued that the decision, which was based in part on the family division's view that C.F. had an immediate need for permanency, was irrational in light of the court's contemporaneous decision not to terminate the parental rights of C.F.'s father.. Although C.F. originally filed the termination petition, which was later joined by the Department for Children and Families (DCF), and did not appeal the family division's decision to terminate mother's parental rights, he also filed a brief asking the Vermont Supreme Court to reverse that decision based on the court's failure to solicit the opinions of C.F.'s attorney and guardian ad litem (GAL) at the termination hearing. Finding no reversible errors, the Supreme Court affirmed. View "In re C.F." on Justia Law

Mother appealed a superior court (family division) order finding that her five-year-old son, M.K., was a child in need of care or supervision (CHINS) based on a single incident of abuse. She argued that the CHINS determination must be reversed because the evidence was insufficient to prove the allegation of abuse. Finding no reversible error, the Supreme Court affirmed. View "In re M.K." on Justia Law