In re Parentage of R.C.

2026 IL App (1st) 250330-U
Appellate Court of Illinois·Decided April 14, 2026·No. 1-25-0330·Unpublished

Opinion

2026 IL App (1st) 250330-U

SECOND DIVISION

April 14, 2026

No. 1-25-0330

NOTICE: This order was filed under Supreme Court Rule 23 and is not precedent except in the limited circumstances allowed under Rule 23(e)(1).

IN THE

APPELLATE COURT OF ILLINOIS FIRST JUDICIAL DISTRICT

IN RE PARENTAGE OF R.C. and E.C.: )

) Appeal from the

SHARON SELEB, ) Circuit Court of ) Cook County

Petitioner-Appellant, )

) 13 D 80410

v. )

) Honorable

SCOTT CLARK, ) Rosa M. Silva, ) Judge Presiding

Respondent-Appellee. )

JUSTICE ELLIS delivered the judgment of the court.

Justices McBride and D.B Walker concurred in the judgment.

ORDER

¶1 Held: Affirmed. Decision to allow joint decision-making and equal parenting time was not against manifest weight of evidence.

¶2 After years of litigation, Sharon Seleb and Scott Clark, unmarried parents of two children, entered into an agreed allocation of parental responsibility in 2019. The agreed judgment included 50/50 parenting time and joint decision-making authority over all decisions but education, which was granted solely to Scott.

¶3 In 2021, Scott moved to Michigan and Sharon filed a petition to modify the agreed judgment. The court modified the judgment to give Sharon the vast majority of parenting time.

Then Scott returned to Chicago and ultimately requested that his equal parenting time be restored. The court reimposed the original agreement on parenting time, returning Scott’s share to fifty percent. Sharon appeals that judgment.

¶4 Sharon also requested sole decision-making authority over all major decisions involving the child. The court denied that request but did, for the first time, give Sharon equal decision- making authority over education decisions for the children. Sharon appeals that judgment, too.

¶5 We find no error in the court’s rulings and affirm.

¶6 BACKGROUND

¶7 Sharon and Scott were never married and had two children: one born in 2013, the other in 2016. While he is healthy now, the younger child was born premature and required extremely intensive care for the first few years of his life due to issues with his lungs.

¶8 The parties had a stormy relationship even before the birth of the first child; they each sought sole custody of their firstborn in 2013 before eventually agreeing to joint custody. Their attempts at reconciliation were spotty and short-lived, but they did result in the birth of a second child in 2016. We need not wade into the full history. Suffice it to say that, after years of back- and-forth litigation, including several motions for contempt, the court finally entered an Agreed Allocation Judgment (AAJ) in April 2019.

¶9 Relevant to this appeal, the AAJ provided that the parties agreed to a “2-2-3” parenting schedule during the school year—meaning, essentially, that one parent had the kids Monday to Wednesday, the other Wednesday to Friday, and they alternated weekends. During the summer, the parents alternated full weeks. All parental decision-making was joint with the exception of education decisions, where Scott had sole authority. Almost immediately after the entry of the

AAJ, the contentiousness between Sharon and Scott erupted again, each filing motions to compel and accusing the other of violating various orders and rulings of the court, including the AAJ.

¶ 10 This pattern continued until October 2021, when Scott moved to Michigan with his wife, Jade, and their son. (Scott and Jade met and were married at some point after Scott’s and Sharon’s children were born.) In response, Sharon filed a petition to modify parental responsibilities—actually two motions: an October 20 emergency motion to modify parenting time and an October 26 petition to fully modify the AAJ.

¶ 11 In early November, the court granted Sharon’s emergency motion. Per the order, “[c]ommencing November 19, 2021, Scott shall have regular parenting time every other weekend, which shall be defined as Friday (pick up after school) to Sunday by 5:00 p.m.” The court also allowed Scott leave to respond to Sharon’s October 26 motion to modify.

¶ 12 As Scott would fully explain at trial, the move to Michigan was temporary. But while he was there, he was involved in a domestic incident with his father-in-law. The record is fuzzy on details, but it ended with Scott spending a night in jail and Jade obtaining a protective order against Scott. The protective order did not list any of his children or restrict his parental rights in any way.

¶ 13 Shortly after the incident, in March 2022, Scott moved back to the Chicagoland area and filed for divorce from Jade. Despite moving back, the November 2021 emergency order limiting his parenting time remained in place. Finally in March 2024, Scott filed a motion to reinstate the original parenting schedule from the AAJ. Scott explained at trial that he waited so long to file his petition because he first tried to settle the issue with Sharon without litigation, but she refused. And after the case had dragged on for 11 years, he didn’t have the money or emotional

energy to constantly fight Sharon in court. Sharon would later admit that she would have never agreed to give Scott his time back and that “it would have been litigated.”

¶ 14 In addition to the parenting-time issue, Sharon’s October 26 petition also sought to modify the parties’ decision-making rights. Recall that, in the AAJ, the parties shared decision- making, except for education decisions, which was Scott’s exclusive domain. Sharon’s petition sought to invest her with sole decision-making authority over all major decisions.

¶ 15 In April 2024, the court began the hearing on Sharon’s petition to modify and Scott’s petition to reinstate his parenting time. The hearing consisted of several days of testimony drawn out from April to December. Scott was represented by counsel, while Sharon appeared pro se throughout.

¶ 16 The majority of the hearing was consumed with Sharon’s questioning of witnesses and her narrative testimony. While we commend her effort, most of the evidence she elicited can be summarized as a list of grievances against Scott, which admittedly are numerous. What’s more, almost all these grievances concerned Scott’s treatment of Sharon, not the kids (though we acknowledge that Scott’s treatment of Sharon was, at times, deplorable).

¶ 17 The children’s GAL, Michael Bender, was adamant about one thing: stability in the choice of the kids’ schooling was paramount. He explained that, during Scott’s exclusive control over educational decisions, there had been a lot of inconsistency with the kids staying at the same school. The details are unclear, but it appears the kids had enrolled in approximately three schools in four or five years. Nevertheless, the children were doing well and thriving at their current school, St. Jerome Catholic School (St. Jerome), and the GAL recommended that the boys stay at the school until at least the older of the two graduated. As to their younger child, the GAL explained that since he was much further away from completing the program, it was a

“different” consideration. Regardless of his opinion on whether the younger child should stay at St. Jerome, the GAL believed that consistency was key, and that the boys had not achieved that with Scott at the helm.

¶ 18 The GAL also had a few grievances with Sharon. During her questioning, Sharon attempted to show that the GAL’s opinion was made without having spoken to the boys. He admitted he hadn’t spoken to them before the hearing. But he had “been trying to set that up for about two months now,” and Sharon “ha[d] been difficult about it.” For example, Sharon insisted that he speak to her first and demanded to know what he would ask the kids, which the GAL deemed “completely inappropriate.”

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In re Parentage of R.C., 2026 IL App (1st) 250330-U (Ill. Ct. App. 2026).

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