Will P. Cotten v. Elizabeth Austin Cotten

CourtCourt of Appeals of Tennessee
DecidedSeptember 2, 2025
DocketM2023-01282-COA-R3-CV
StatusPublished

This text of Will P. Cotten v. Elizabeth Austin Cotten (Will P. Cotten v. Elizabeth Austin Cotten) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Appeals of Tennessee primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Will P. Cotten v. Elizabeth Austin Cotten, (Tenn. Ct. App. 2025).

Opinion

09/02/2025 IN THE COURT OF APPEALS OF TENNESSEE AT NASHVILLE June 17, 2025 Session

WILL P. COTTEN v. ELIZABETH AUSTIN COTTEN

Appeal from the Chancery Court for Williamson County No. 20CV-49582J Deanna B. Johnson, Judge ___________________________________

No. M2023-01282-COA-R3-CV ___________________________________

A mother appeals the trial court’s entry of a parenting plan that designates her and her former spouse joint primary residential parents and grants them equal residential parenting time. Because the parties did not agree to be joint primary residential parents, we modify the parenting plan to name the mother primary residential parent. Otherwise, we affirm.

Tenn. R. App. P. 3 Appeal as of Right; Judgment of the Chancery Court Affirmed as Modified

W. NEAL MCBRAYER, J., delivered the opinion of the court, in which ANDY D. BENNETT and JEFFREY USMAN, JJ., joined.

Cynthia A. Cheatham, Nashville, Tennessee, and Travis Hawkins, Chattanooga, Tennessee, for the appellant, Elizabeth Austin Cotten.

Dana C. McLendon III, Franklin, Tennessee, for the appellee, Will P. Cotten.

OPINION

I.

A.

In 2020, Will Cotten (“Father”) filed for an absolute divorce from Elizabeth Cotten (“Mother”), his wife of approximately ten years. Mother filed a counterpetition. The court granted Mother a divorce on stipulated grounds, reserving the remaining divorce issues for a final hearing. On appeal, neither party challenges the trial court’s ruling on financial or property issues. The primary dispute here, as in the trial court, centers on Father’s parenting time with the parties’ minor children, who were three and nearly one when the divorce was filed.

Shortly after the divorce filing, Mother became convinced that Father was hiding information. She searched a laptop computer Father left at the marital residence. There, she discovered an audio recording from within her vehicle and an empty folder titled “[Mother’s initials] Upskirt.” After reviewing the laptop’s internet browser history, Mother saw what appeared to be references to pornography, involving the word “teen.” Although she never viewed the referenced websites, she suspected Father of viewing pornography, including pornography involving minors.

Father moved for entry of a temporary parenting plan. Over Mother’s strident opposition, the court set a temporary parenting schedule requiring the parties to exchange the children every two days. At the hearing, Mother asserted that Father had a serious drinking problem. She also accused him of verbal and mental abuse as well as stalking, including the installation of “hidden cameras in the home, recorders in her car, and tracking on her phone.” Father denied these accusations. To allay Mother’s fears, the court prohibited both parents from consuming alcohol during their parenting time.

Later, at Mother’s request, the court appointed a child development expert to make recommendations regarding coparenting. After several meetings with the parties and their son, the expert recommended “that parenting time should be equally divided.” She found that both parents were “invested in their children’s well-being” and “perceived by the children as safe.” But there were also “dramatic discrepancies” and “polarization in [Mother’s and Father’s] views” of events that “necessitate[d] the support of a third party.”

After entry of the temporary plan, Mother took Father’s laptop to an information technology company for forensic analysis and retrieval of deleted files. According to Mother, the analysis uncovered nude and “upskirt” images of her and her sister as well as images depicting child pornography. Mother reported her findings to the police and the Department of Children’s Services (“DCS”), who apparently investigated but took no further action.

Additionally, Mother filed an “emergency motion” asking the court to immediately suspend Father’s parenting time or to order that his parenting time be supervised by a neutral third party pending a full hearing. The court denied Mother’s request for immediate relief.

Within hours, Mother petitioned for an order of protection based primarily on the same allegations. According to the petition, Father had “physically, verbally, and emotionally abused” Mother throughout the marriage, including via extensive “stalking and wiretapping.” His emotional abuse included “cussing directly at [her], cussing about 2 [her], name calling, yelling, screaming, unpredictable rage outbursts, violent words and actions, [and] threatening body language.” His physical abuse included instances of kicking a chair in which Mother was sitting, throwing objects “across the room,” dropping a casserole dish on the stove, blocking access to a hallway, picking Mother up, and slamming doors. Despite her previous testimony that Father had caused “no harm to [the children] physically,” Mother asserted a concern that he spanked their son “excessively.” Based on the information recently discovered on Father’s laptop, Mother was “terrified” that Father was “currently stalking [the] children and [her], . . . taking inappropriate pictures of [the] children or [her], or . . . recording [them].”

The court issued a temporary ex parte order of protection preventing Father from contact with Mother or the children. With Father’s consent, the court set an evidentiary hearing approximately 10 weeks later. At the hearing, Mother questioned her computer expert extensively about the laptop’s internet browser history. She elicited testimony that the expert “interpret[ed]” certain URLs containing the word “search” as indicative that someone had actively searched for certain terms on pornographic websites. But the expert cautioned that there “wasn’t much to glean” from most of the URLs. Due to time constraints, only the direct examination of Mother’s expert was completed that day. Pending a final ruling, the court granted Father four professionally supervised hours of parenting time each week.

B.

For various reasons, it was nearly a month before the order of protection hearing resumed. In the meantime, the court held a hearing on Father’s temporary parenting time.

Mother hypothesized that Father could “be taking inappropriate pictures of [their] children and potentially sharing those with people.” She testified that she once found a black recording device in a pile of laundry in the parties’ master bathroom. She presented “upskirt” videos of her and her twin sister in their homes and on vacation as well as other videos of Mother taken without her knowledge or permission. Additionally, she submitted images she alleged to be pornography depicting “small children.”

Mother reported new concerns about “bruises and marks on the children.” She had taken dozens of photographs of the children beginning “days after [Father] filed for divorce” and continuing until his parenting time was suspended. She started noticing spots on the children, which she described as “thumb mark” like, in some of the photos.

For his part, Father asserted his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination in response to questions about secret recordings of Mother or her sister. But he adamantly denied abusing his own children or Mother. And he had “never in [his] life” seen child pornography.

3 The neutral parenting supervisor reported that she “didn’t see anything concerning” in Father’s interactions with the children. The children “were very happy to see their father” and “were very comfortable with him.”

At the end of the hearing, the court ordered the parties to resume the equal parenting schedule in the temporary plan with supervision of Father’s parenting time. It allowed Father’s parents to supervise going forward rather than a third party.

C.

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Will P. Cotten v. Elizabeth Austin Cotten, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/will-p-cotten-v-elizabeth-austin-cotten-tennctapp-2025.