Matter of Nikole S. v. Jordan W.

123 A.D.3d 497, 998 N.Y.S.2d 362

• Court: Appellate Division of the Supreme Court of the State of New York
• Decided: December 11, 2014
• Docket: 13744
• Status: Published

Opinion

Order, Family Court, Bronx County (Valerie Eels, J.), entered on or about December 10, 2013, which, after a hearing, denied the petition for custody of the subject child brought pursuant to article 6 of the Family Court Act, unanimously affirmed, without costs.

The record supports Family Court’s determination that it was not in the best interests of the child, who had been placed in a non-kinship foster home, to grant the custody petition filed by petitioner, her adult cousin. The Family Court placed appropriate emphasis upon the fact that petitioner and her then three-year-old daughter were residing in a household that included a registered sex offender when she filed the custody petition, and that she remained there for a year, despite knowing that she was unlikely to obtain custody while she continued to reside in that home, which reflected a lack of parental judgment (see Matter of Richard C.T. v Helen R.G., 37 AD3d 1118 [4th Dept 2007]; Matter of Roe v Roe, 33 AD3d 1152, 1153 [3d Dept 2006]; cf. Matter of Michaellica Lee W., 106 AD3d 639, 640 [1st Dept 2013]). The Family Court also appropriately took into account petitioner’s financial issues, which could result in her returning to the home where the sex offender resided, the limited contact between petitioner and child, and the effect awarding custody to petitioner would have upon the agency’s ability to reunite respondent mother with the child, before concluding that granting the custody petition would not be in the child’s best interests.

Concur — Gonzalez, P.J., Tom, Friedman, Acosta and Moskowitz, JJ.