Background
In August 2024, both parents of infant C.—Crimea Baker and Sean Lange—were killed at their home in Frederick County, Maryland. The day after the killings, the local sheriff placed C. and three half-siblings with Jennifer Duncan, a close friend of the deceased mother, and her parents, Valerie and David Duncan. On August 30, 2024, the circuit court entered an ex parte emergency order granting the Duncans and Jennifer Duncan temporary custody of all four children, without notice to the child’s paternal relatives.
Cherlie Augustin, the paternal aunt of C. and sister of the deceased father Sean Lange, intervened in the proceedings and ultimately filed a complaint seeking sole legal and physical custody of C., or in the alternative liberal visitation. The Duncans moved to dismiss her pleading, arguing that because they held temporary court-ordered custody, Augustin was required—as any nonparent seeking custody over the objection of a parent—to allege that they were unfit or that exceptional circumstances existed, or that she was a de facto parent by consent of C.’s parents. The circuit court agreed and dismissed Augustin’s complaint on September 15, 2025. The court also entered a final judgment on February 18, 2026, awarding sole legal and physical custody of all four children to the Duncans. Augustin appealed both the dismissal order and the final judgment, which the Appellate Court consolidated.
A separate issue on appeal concerned the circuit court’s order requiring Augustin to pay a portion of the best interest attorney’s (BIA) interim fees—approximately $1,988 plus a $2,000 retainer—an amount proportionally equal to that assessed against the other active parties in the case.
The Court’s Holding
The Appellate Court of Maryland reversed the dismissal of Augustin’s complaint and remanded for further proceedings, while affirming the BIA fee award. Writing for the panel, Judge Arthur held that the parental presumption—which requires a third party to allege parental unfitness, exceptional circumstances, or de facto parent status before pursuing custody or visitation—is rooted in the Due Process Clause’s protection of the fundamental rights of biological and adoptive parents. Because both of C.’s parents were deceased, no party in the dispute held parental status, and the constitutional predicate for the presumption was simply absent. The Duncans’ temporary court-ordered custody did not elevate them to the legal status of parents for this purpose.
The court held that the circuit court erred in dismissing Augustin’s complaint for failure to plead unfitness or exceptional circumstances against the Duncans. In a situation where all competing claimants are nonparents, the governing standard is the best interests of the child. On remand, the circuit court is directed to evaluate custody and visitation using the statutory factors set forth in Maryland Code, Family Law § 9-201, modified as necessary where those factors reference a child’s “parents” rather than court-appointed caregivers or relatives. The court also rejected the Duncans’ argument that Augustin was barred from amending her pleading from a visitation-only request to one seeking custody, finding the amendment proper under Maryland Rule 2-341.
On the BIA fee issue, the court affirmed. Maryland Code, Family Law § 1-202(a)(2) grants circuit courts broad discretion to impose BIA counsel fees against parties as is just and proper under the circumstances. The court found no abuse of discretion in allocating the fees roughly equally among the active parties in a complex, multi-party proceeding.
Key Takeaways
- The parental presumption requiring nonparents to allege unfitness or exceptional circumstances is constitutionally grounded in living parents’ due process rights; when both parents are deceased, the presumption does not apply and no party is entitled to invoke it.
- A nonparent holding temporary, emergency court-ordered custody does not acquire parent-like standing for purposes of the parental presumption—temporary custodial status conferred by an ex parte order is not equivalent to biological or adoptive parenthood.
- Custody disputes among nonparents over an orphaned child must be resolved under a best-interests-of-the-child analysis, using the FL § 9-201 statutory factors adapted to fit the circumstances of the case; this is an issue of first impression in Maryland.
- A party who intervened with a visitation-only complaint may amend to seek custody without special court pre-approval, provided the amendment complies with Maryland Rule 2-341’s timing requirements and no scheduling order prohibits it.
- Circuit courts have broad statutory discretion under FL § 1-202(a)(2) to allocate BIA fees among parties in contested custody proceedings, and an even allocation among active parties will not be disturbed absent an abuse of that discretion.
Why It Matters
This decision addresses a genuinely unprecedented scenario in Maryland: a custody dispute in which both parents are dead and all competing claimants are nonparents. By holding that the parental presumption has no application in such cases, the court clarifies that practitioners and trial judges should not import the unfitness/exceptional-circumstances framework into proceedings where no parent’s constitutional rights are at stake. The best-interests standard governs, and all nonparent claimants—whether friends of the family holding temporary custody or biological relatives of the child—stand on equal procedural footing when seeking to establish their claims.
The decision also has practical significance for the growing body of cases involving orphaned children, a category that Maryland statutory law does not expressly address. The court’s instruction to use FL § 9-201’s custody factors “modified as necessary” signals that trial courts must exercise flexible judgment rather than mechanically applying a framework designed for parent-versus-parent disputes. Maryland practitioners handling similar matters should expect courts on remand to give substantial weight to the continuity of the child’s existing caregiving relationships alongside the claims of biological relatives.