Background
Jennifer Lohner and Kyle Wiggs divorced after a high-conflict proceeding involving three children. Wife obtained a permanent protection order after the district court found that husband had physically harassed her on two occasions. At permanent orders, the court also found that husband had committed domestic violence and engaged in coercive control.
The district court denied wife’s requested relocation to Michigan, divided parenting time equally, gave husband sole authority over medical and extracurricular decisions, and gave wife sole educational decision-making authority. But it also required the children to remain in their current schools unless the parties agreed otherwise and required wife to choose any new school within ten miles of husband’s residence unless he agreed. The court equally divided a marital estate worth more than $1 million.
The Court’s Holding
The Court of Appeals affirmed the medical and extracurricular provisions. Allowing husband, subject to specified limits and notice, to schedule necessary nonemergency medical care and one extracurricular activity per child during wife’s parenting time was part of allocating decision-making between two fit parents, not an unconstitutional infringement of wife’s parental rights or an improper delegation of parenting time. The provisions also preserved the protection order and third-party exchange arrangements.
The court reversed the educational-decision-making provisions. Although the district court purported to give wife sole educational authority, requiring husband’s agreement to change schools or select a school more than ten miles from his home gave him de facto joint authority over educational decisions. Because the court had found domestic violence and also found the parties unable to make joint decisions, it could not impose joint decision-making without the statutory findings that they could cooperate safely and in the children’s best interests. The property division, including the valuations of husband’s business interests and the reservation of jurisdiction over uncertain ETF/THOR proceeds, was affirmed.
Key Takeaways
- A court cannot label educational decision-making “sole” while requiring the other parent’s consent for key school decisions.
- After a domestic-violence finding, joint decision-making over an objection requires findings that cooperative decision-making can occur safely and in the children’s best interests.
- Appellate courts defer to trial courts’ credibility assessments of parental-responsibilities evaluators and to reasonable property valuations supported by the record.
Why It Matters
The decision distinguishes permissible implementation details for a parent’s allocated authority from restrictions that effectively create joint decision-making. In domestic-violence cases, that distinction has statutory consequences: courts must make the required safety and cooperation findings before imposing any form of joint authority.
On remand, the district court must reconsider educational decision-making based on current circumstances, allow both parties to present current evidence, and leave the existing allocation in place until a new order is entered.