Gammon v. Gammon

529 S.W.3d 350
CourtMissouri Court of Appeals
DecidedSeptember 19, 2017
DocketWD 79869
StatusPublished
Cited by4 cases

This text of 529 S.W.3d 350 (Gammon v. Gammon) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Missouri Court of Appeals primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Gammon v. Gammon, 529 S.W.3d 350 (Mo. Ct. App. 2017).

Opinion

Gary D. Witt, Judge

Angie Gammon (“Mother”) appeals the judgment of the Circuit Court of Vernon County granting to Randy Gammon (“Father”) sole medical decision making authority for the couple’s two children. Further, Mother appeals the court’s division of overnight parenting time between Mother and Father. We affirm.

Factual Background1

Mother and Father were married in 2007 and had two sons in 2008 and 2010, respectively. Mother filed for divorce from Father in 2011 but that petition was ultimately dismissed. In December 2012, Father filed for divorce from Mother. The court entered its Judgment of Dissolution of Marriage June 16, 2016 (“Judgment”). At the time of the Judgment, the children were eight and six.2

The Judgment called for joint legal and physical custody between Mother and Father (“Custody Plan”). The Custody Plan provided that the children’s principle residence shall be with Father but that Mother would have parenting time with both children every other weekend from Friday at 6:00 p.m. until Sunday at 6:00 p.m. Additionally, Mother would have the children Wednesdays from 3:00 p.m. to 7:00 p.m. The couple would have a reasonably equal split of holidays. The Custody Plan was almost identical to the parenting plans submitted by Father and Mother.3

The court found that Mother and Father should make joint decisions on the children’s education, dental, child care providers, extracurricular activities, and religious upbringing. The court, however, found that “Mother has unorthodox beliefs as to medical treatment” and awarded Father sole decision making authority over the children’s medical treatment and selection of the children’s health care providers.

Mother appeals the Judgment of the court arguing that the court did not have sufficient evidence upon which to determine that Father should have sole medical decision making authority. Further, she claims that the Court did not provide her with enough parenting time to meet the statutory requirement for “frequent, continuing, and meaningful contact” under section 452.375.4.4

[353]*353Standard of Review

This Court will affirm the circuit court’s judgment unless there is no substantial evidence to support it, it is against the weight of the evidence, or it erroneously declares or applies the law. Murphy v. Carron, 536 S.W.2d 30, 32 (Mo. banc 1976). “Substantial evidence is evidence that, if believed, has some probative force on each fact that is necessary to sustain the circuit court’s judgment.” Ivie v. Smith, 439 S.W.3d 189, 199 (Mo. banc 2014). “To prevail on [a] substantial-evidence challenge, [the appellant] must demonstrate that there is no evidence in the record tending to prove a fact that is necessary to sustain the circuit court’s judgment as a matter of law.” Id. at 200. When reviewing whether the circuit court’s judgment is supported by substantial evidence, this Court views “the evidence in the light most favorable to the circuit court’s judgment and defer[s] to the circuit court’s credibility determinations.” Id. This Court “accept[s] as true the evidence and inferences .,. favorable to the trial court’s decree and disregard[s] all contrary evidence.” Id., quoting Zweig v. Metro. St. Louis Sewer Dist., 412 S.W.3d 223, 231 (Mo. banc 2013).

Pasternak v. Pasternak, 467 S.W.3d 264, 268 (Mo. banc 2015).

Discussion

Mother raises two points on appeal. In her first point, Mother contends that the court erred in granting Father sole decision making authority over medical decisions for the children.

The court found that mother had “unorthodox beliefs as to medical treatment.” This included a wide variety of testimony from Mother including that:

• Mother believed that she was a “healer” who could heal aliments by moving her hands over the body. She described this practice as healing with “love.”
• Mother believed she directly communicated with God, who would use her to heal people.
• She gave “treatments” to Father that consisted of “pinching” his muscles to treat the sexual abuse Mother believed Father had suffered at the hands of Father’s mother since birth. Mother believed this abuse had occurred because of her intuition and “testing”5 she had done, even though Father denied any abuse by his mother.
• Mother had no formal medical training or certification but' treated patients including family members and others. Mother would take “patients” to the basement of the home and treat them with oils, laying on of hands and meditation.
• Mother testified she used Bio-Energetics Synergistic Technique or B.E.S.T. to remove “interferences” by “stimulating certain points of the body while focusing on positive emotions to eliminate negative ones.”
• Mother practices healings in which she would place oils on herself and meditate on the person in order to have the person healed by the oil. Sometimes these “treatments” occurred over the telephone when the person being treated was not in Mother’s presence.
• Mother has sought treatment from at least two chiropractors for sexual abuse which she testified she suffered as a child at the hands of her father and step-father. She ended up [354]*354in a sexual relationship with one or possibly both chiropractors as part of her “treatment” during the time she was married to Father.
• Mother believes that western medicine is a “complete failure” and for this reason cancelled her own health insurance.
• She would meditate over the phone with one of her chiropractors with whom she was having an affair and “rebalance” his. heart with oils and “rebalance” his chakras by .applying oils to herself. On one occasion she and her sister, Amie, felt called to meditate over him from their separate homes and together they “specifically removed six weighty interferences on the top of [his] primary heart muscle.”
• Mother failed to attend a deposition in this case because of a heart issue for which she sought treatment from her chiropractor who used “quantum neurology” to determine that the “main arteries in [Mother’s] left arm were blocked.” Yet, Mother never sought medical treatment instead taking “natural blood thinners” she received from her chiropractor.

This Court finds that there was sufficient evidence from which the trial court could find that Mother’s medical beliefs were significantly unorthodox. Mother had previously treated her children with essential oils despite both the children and Father requesting that she not apply the oil treatments. The children stated that odor from the oils embarrassed them at school following these treatments. She declined to.

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Related

Sally A. White v. Clayton H. White
Missouri Court of Appeals, 2020
King v. King
533 S.W.3d 232 (Missouri Court of Appeals, 2017)

Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
529 S.W.3d 350, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/gammon-v-gammon-moctapp-2017.