Matter of Jose M.C. v. Liliana C.

2017 NY Slip Op 3906, 150 A.D.3d 514, 55 N.Y.S.3d 21

Opinion

Order, Family Court, New York County (Carol Goldstein, J.), entered on or about April 15, 2016, which dismissed the father’s petition to modify a final visitation order, unanimously affirmed, without costs.

The father has failed to establish that there has been a change of circumstances such that a modification would be in the child’s best interests (Matter of Luis F. v Dayhana D., 109 AD3d 731 [1st Dept 2013]). While the father maintains that he has relocated to New York, the trial court’s finding to the contrary is entitled to deference. Regardless, the father does not have a residence of his own in Manhattan but sleeps on his mother’s couch. The father has also failed to show that expanding visits would be in the child’s best interests. The trial court found that the child’s needs were being well met in the mother’s primary care and that the change proposed by the father would virtually eliminate all of the mother’s leisure time with the

child. Moreover, the child herself, who was 13 at the time of the hearing, does not wish to see the father more frequently (see Matter of Liliana C. v Jose M.C., 128 AD3d 496 [1st Dept 2015]).

Concur—Friedman, J.P., Richter, Moskowitz, Gische and Kapnick, JJ.