Woodward v. LaFranca

2016 UT App 141, 381 P.3d 1125, 816 Utah Adv. Rep. 56, 2016 Utah App. LEXIS 144, 2016 WL 3746349
CourtCourt of Appeals of Utah
DecidedJuly 8, 2016
Docket20140620-CA
StatusPublished
Cited by8 cases

This text of 2016 UT App 141 (Woodward v. LaFranca) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Appeals of Utah primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Woodward v. LaFranca, 2016 UT App 141, 381 P.3d 1125, 816 Utah Adv. Rep. 56, 2016 Utah App. LEXIS 144, 2016 WL 3746349 (Utah Ct. App. 2016).

Opinion

Opinion

ORME, Judge:

¶1 James Woodward (Father) again challenges the trial court’s denial of his petition to modify the child custody provisions of the divorce decree between himself and Julie LaFranca (Mother) regarding their child (Child). In his previous appeal, Woodward v. LaFranca, 2013 UT App 147, 305 P.3d 181, we identified a number of problems with the trial court’s decision and reversed and remanded for the trial court to address those shortcomings. Id. ¶ 34. Because we determine that the trial court substantially complied with the mandate of our prior decision, we affirm.

BACKGROUND 2

¶2 Father filed for divorce from Mother in July 2006, just before the birth of Child. Id. ¶ 2. At that time, Father and Mother stipulated to Mother’s custody of Child “subject to Father’s rights to parent time.” Id. Just over three years later, in August 2009, Mother began making accusations—-to the Division of Child and Family Services and to Father’s employer—“that Child had been physically and sexually abused during Father’s parent time.” Id. ¶ 3. After investigation, however, “[a]ll of Mother’s abuse allegations were determined to be unfounded.” Id. Almost a year after the accusations began, in July 2010, Father filed a petition to modify the divorce decree, requesting custody of Child. Id. ¶ 4. That November, a domestic relations commissioner recommended transferring temporary custody of Child to Father on the ground that Mother’s “repeated unsubstantiated abuse allegations” themselves constituted severe child abuse. Id. See id ¶ 5. Following Mother’s objections to the transfer of custody to Father, the trial court took up the matter just over a year later. Id. ¶ 5. The trial court heard testimony from Mother and Father as well as from several experts, including a custody evaluator (Evaluator), Child’s therapist (Therapist), and a court-appointed Special Master. Id. Although the expert testimony overwhelmingly supported Father, the trial court found that each expert lacked, for one reason or another, credibility or persuasiveness. See id. So the trial court, “relying primarily on Mother’s testimony, ... denied Father’s petition to modify custody.” Id.

¶3 Thus, somewhat uniquely, the instant case turns on whether judicial discretion extends so far as to permit the trial court to reject the testimony of all the experts that testified before it. Compare Woodward, 2013 UT App 147, ¶ 5, 305 P.3d 181, with In re *1128 G.V., 916 P.2d 918, 920 (Utah Ct.App.1996) (per curiam) (upholding a trial court’s finding that the State’s expert witness’s testimony was more credible than that given by the mother’s expert witness in a parental rights termination decision). See also Ouk v. Ouk, 2015 UT App 104, ¶ 14, 348 P.3d 751 (“Clearly, the fact-finder is in the best position to judge the credibility of witnesses and is free to disbelieve their testimony. Even where testimony is uncontroverted, a trial court is free to disregard such testimony if it finds the evidence ... not credible.”) (citation and internal quotation marks omitted).

¶4 The trial court originally dismissed as incredible the testimony of all the expert witnesses who testified at trial—Therapist, Evaluator, and the court-appointed Special Master—and made a number of factual findings and legal conclusions, almost all of which favored Mother. In Father’s original appeal, we held that the trial court failed to adequately explain and justify its rejection of the expert witnesses’ testimony and improperly weighed certain of the best interests factors relevant to the determination of custody. See Woodward, 2013 UT App 147, ¶ 34, 305 P.3d 181. Specifically, we held that the trial court exceeded its discretion when it entirely rejected Evaluator’s testimony. See id. ¶¶ 15 - 19.

¶5 We also concluded that minor inconsistencies in Therapist’s testimony concerning Mother’s state of mind during therapy sessions did “not definitively demonstrate the inaccuracy of the Therapist’s [testimony]” and that, accordingly, it was not reasonable to “question[] the Therapist’s overall credibility” on that basis. Id. ¶ 10. Furthermore, although wé held that the trial court did not exceed its discretion in assigning little weight to the Special Master’s testimony, we were “concerned with the fact that the court dismissed the Special Master’s concerns as a threshold matter without evaluating those concerns in the context of the best interests factors.” Id. ¶ 20. We noted that the Special Master’s testimony “was relevant, in eonjunction with the other evidence presented in this case, to the court’s overall best interests determination,” and we emphasized that it “should have been analyzed accordingly.” Id.

¶6 We concluded that the trial court also erred in its consideration of the best interests factors because it

• found that the best interests factor of emotional stability weighed in favor of Mother without making any findings as to Father’s emotional stability, much less considering “whether Mother was more emotionally stable than Father,” id ¶¶ 27 -28;
• failed to explain why it rejected Evaluator’s opinion as to Child’s bond with his stepbrother and apparently considered “the amount of time Child lived with his brother as determinative of their bond,” id. ¶ 29;
• concluded, without further explanation, “that Child was more bonded to Mother than to Father because he had been raised primarily by Mother during the early years of his life,” id. ¶ 30; and
• improperly focused on whether Mother’s interference with Father’s visitation was a material change in circumstances instead of “weighing the parents’ relative ability to facilitate visitation,” see id. ¶¶ 32 -33.

Finally, although we concluded that the trial court did not exceed its discretion in finding that Mother did not abuse Child, id. ¶ 25, we questioned the trial court’s conclusion that “[t]his factor does not weigh in favor of [Father]” because it neither made findings nor was there evidence presented at trial that Father had abused Child, id. ¶ 25 n. 9 (alterations in original). We further pointed out that “if the court believed Mother had abused Child, just not severely, ... this factor would actually preponderate in favor of Father.” Id. Therefore, we instructed the trial court to “weigh this factor accordingly” in reconsidering the best interests factors on remand. 3 Id.

*1129

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Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
2016 UT App 141, 381 P.3d 1125, 816 Utah Adv. Rep. 56, 2016 Utah App. LEXIS 144, 2016 WL 3746349, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/woodward-v-lafranca-utahctapp-2016.