Kristin L. Gordon v. Jeffrey M. Cheskin

2013 ME 113, 82 A.3d 1221, 2013 WL 6818232, 2013 Me. LEXIS 114
CourtSupreme Judicial Court of Maine
DecidedDecember 24, 2013
DocketDocket Wal-13-125
StatusPublished
Cited by26 cases

This text of 2013 ME 113 (Kristin L. Gordon v. Jeffrey M. Cheskin) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Supreme Judicial Court of Maine primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Kristin L. Gordon v. Jeffrey M. Cheskin, 2013 ME 113, 82 A.3d 1221, 2013 WL 6818232, 2013 Me. LEXIS 114 (Me. 2013).

Opinion

SILVER, J.

[¶ 1] Jeffrey M. Cheskin appeals from a judgment of the District Court (Belfast, Worth, J.) granting Kristin L. Gordon’s motion to modify the custody order concerning the parties’ two minor daughters. The effect of the order was to deprive Cheskin of overnight visitation with the girls. Cheskin argues that several of the court’s factual findings were clearly erroneous, and that the court erred by adopting every term of Gordon’s proposed order. Gordon concedes that the trial court’s finding that Cheskin had been convicted of a crime was clear error, but asserts that this error was harmless. We affirm the judgment.

I. BACKGROUND

[¶ 2] Cheskin and Gordon divorced in Pennsylvania in 2005. They have two daughters, who were ages nine and twelve at the time of the hearing in this case. A custody order issued in Pennsylvania on March 16, 2005, was superseded by the parties’ agreement to a second custody order, dated May 4, 2006. The second custody order permitted Gordon to move to Maine with the girls in the summer of 2006 and to maintain primary physical custody; it modified Cheskin’s visitation schedule accordingly. The parties maintained shared parental rights and responsibilities, or “joint legal custody,” of the girls. 1

[¶ 3] Cheskin remarried in August 2006. He had a son with his second wife in November 2007. Cheskin and his second wife divorced in 2009. In 2011, Cheskin was charged in Delaware with offensive touching 2 and endangering the welfare of a child. The charges arose from an incident where, in response to being kicked while trying to change his three-year-old son into a swimming diaper, Cheskin grabbed his son’s leg hard enough to leave a pink mark. Cheskin pleaded guilty to offensive touching. He was placed on probation with the condition that, if he successfully met the terms of his probation, the charge would be dismissed without a finding of guilt pursuant to the Domestic Violence First Offenders Diversion Program in New Castle Coun *1223 ty, Delaware. 3 The charge of endangering the welfare of a child was not prosecuted.

[¶ 4] Also in 2011, Cheskin’s ex-wife— his son’s mother — filed a complaint for protection from abuse against Cheskin. A protection from abuse order, which was issued by agreement, remained in effect from May 2011 until May 2012. During that time, Cheskin had only supervised visits with his son. At Gordon’s insistence, Cheskin agreed thát his visits with his daughters would be supervised during that time period as well. Gordon supervised those visits herself.

[¶ 5] Gordon filed a motion to modify the custody order in April 2012. 4 Ches-kin’s unsupervised visits with the girls resumed in the summer of 2012. In July 2012, the Delaware Department of Services for Children, Youth and Their Families opened another investigation following an incident between Cheskin and his son, which the girls witnessed. This incident involved Cheskin grabbing his son, who was misbehaving at an indoor play facility, and pushing him against a Wall.

[¶ 6] After the visit in the summer of 2012, both girls began to display symptoms of anxiety, including nail biting and crying. One daughter had nighttime episodes of shaking so hard that her teeth would chatter; the other began to have problems with bedwetting. Both girls began seeing a counselor in the summer of 2012.

[¶ 7] A hearing on Gordon’s motion to modify the custody order was held before the Maine District Court in Belfast on January 16, 2013. Gordon was concerned that the girls were not being properly fed or bathed while in Cheskin’s care. Both Gordon and her sister, the girls’ aunt, testified that the girls would often return home hungry and head straight to the kitchen to eat upon returning from visits with Cheskin. Cheskin admitted that he often deferred to the girls’ decisions about when they wanted to bathe. One daughter’s asthma seemed to be aggravated after certain visits with Cheskin. On one' occasion, he took her on a hayride, even though she was allergic to hay.

[¶ 8] The girls also frequently returned from visits with their father with unexplained bruises and scratches. Gordon and her sister testified that, on one occasion, one of the girls returned from a visit with a split lip. During the 2012 Thanksgiving visit, a cousin repeatedly struck the younger daughter in the face while the two children were playing without adult supervision. Cheskin testified that he had spanked the girls in the past, but that as a result of the parenting and domestic violence courses he was required to attend as part of his probation, he now believes that physical discipline is inappropriate.

[¶ 9] Gordon provided the court with a proposed order that provided that when the children visited Cheskin in Delaware he would be required to drop them off at the nearby home of Gordon’s sister every evening by 6:30 p.m. The proposed order provided that Cheskin could have visitation *1224 with the girls in Maine over the Columbus Day and Martin Luther King holiday weekends, but only from 9:00 a.m. to 6:30 p.m. on Saturday and Sunday, and from 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. on Monday of those weekends. It also provided that he could have five days of visitation during the girls’ April vacation and fourteen days during July, subject to the same daily time restrictions. Finally, it provided that Cheskin could have similar contact in Delaware with the girls during Thanksgiving through the following Saturday in even-numbered years, and from December 27 through December 31 in odd-numbered years. Cheskin did not submit a proposed order. The only aspect of Gordon’s proposed order that he challenged was that he would no longer be permitted to have overnight visits with the girls.

[¶ 10] The court’s order, dated January 24, 2013, included all of the terms Gordon proposed, including the elimination of Cheskin’s overnight visits with the girls. It also contained four pages of the court’s own factual findings, which included a statement that Cheskin “was convicted” of offensive touching following his guilty plea. The factual findings emphasized that the children appeared to be under-fed when they returned from visiting their father, that their hygiene was poor, and that they received unexplained bruises and other minor injuries. The order highlighted that Cheskin downplayed his problems with disciplining all three of his children, pointing out that he “disparaged [his son’s] mother and said she was being vindictive against him” and that he “minimized his actions” when he testified at the hearing. The court expressed doubt that the domestic violence classes had changed Cheskin for the better, and concluded that he “lacks insight.”

[¶ 11] Cheskin did not request further findings, nor did he file a motion to alter or amend the judgment. Instead, he filed this timely appeal.

. II. DISCUSSION

[¶ 12] A trial court’s factual findings are reviewed for clear error, and they must stand if they are supported by any competent evidence in the record. Harmon v. Emerson, 425 A.2d 978, 981 (Me.1981).

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Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
2013 ME 113, 82 A.3d 1221, 2013 WL 6818232, 2013 Me. LEXIS 114, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/kristin-l-gordon-v-jeffrey-m-cheskin-me-2013.