Background
Solange Spinelli de Carvalho Santos and Bruno Vinicius de Souza Santos, both originally from Brazil, divorced in California in 2022 after separating while living there for work. Their California divorce decree established joint legal and physical custody of their minor daughter, MCS, with the mother serving as primary caretaker. Both parents subsequently relocated to Michigan. The mother later moved to Ohio after her employer transferred her, and the parties agreed to modify custody arrangements to allow that relocation, with the father receiving parenting time every other weekend and daily telephone calls.
Beginning around 2024, the mother pursued a series of allegations against the father — including CPS complaints alleging neglect, a personal protection order in Michigan claiming assault and death threats, criminal sexual conduct allegations arising from a therapist’s report, and a second PPO obtained in Ohio. Each investigation was closed without adverse findings against the father, and the mother admitted that a Brazilian restraining order she had claimed to hold did not exist. Despite the cleared investigations, the mother refused to produce MCS for the father’s court-ordered parenting time and was held in contempt of court — both civilly and criminally — in January 2025. The trial court vacated the Ohio domicile agreement, restored MCS’s domicile to Michigan and the father’s home, and granted the father temporary sole legal and primary physical custody.
Following a multi-day evidentiary hearing spanning April through June 2025, a referee recommended permanent sole legal and primary physical custody to the father, with the mother receiving limited parenting time. The Oakland County Circuit Court adopted the referee’s recommendations in an October 14, 2025 order, which the mother appealed as of right.
The Court’s Holding
The Court of Appeals affirmed the trial court’s order in all respects. On the established custodial environment question, the court held that the trial court did not err by finding that MCS had an established custodial environment only with the father. The court reasoned that the inquiry focuses on the custodial environment existing at the time of the custody determination — not historical arrangements — and that the mother’s own conduct had destroyed any prior custodial environment she shared with MCS. By October 2025, MCS had resided with the father for approximately ten months under the temporary order, which the court found constituted an “appreciable time” sufficient to establish a custodial environment. The court also rejected any per se rule requiring a minimum duration, reaffirming the highly fact-specific nature of the inquiry.
On the best-interest factors under MCL 722.23, the court held that the trial court properly found factors (b), (c), (d), (f), (j), and (l) in favor of the father, and that the court did not impermissibly punish the mother. The court distinguished cases prohibiting use of contempt findings as a proxy for custody modification, holding that here the trial court followed the required statutory procedures and directly linked the mother’s contemptuous conduct to its impact on MCS’s welfare — particularly the interference with MCS’s relationship with her father. The court further held that the trial court appropriately rejected the sexual-abuse allegations as unsupported and found the mother’s refusal to accept the results of the completed investigations to be relevant to her fitness as a custodial parent.
On parenting time, the court affirmed the trial court’s limited schedule — Wednesday evenings and alternating weekend half-days — finding it justified by the mother’s history of violating court orders, her demonstrated dishonesty with the court, and the risk that she might leave the country with MCS given her Brazilian roots, employment uncertainty, and temporary student-visa status. The court also upheld the GPS-monitoring check-in requirement as a proper safeguard given those concerns.
Key Takeaways
- A parent’s own conduct that creates instability and destroys a prior custodial arrangement can eliminate that parent’s established custodial environment, even where she was the child’s primary caretaker for years.
- Michigan courts assess the established custodial environment as it exists at the time of the custody determination; historical caretaking, while relevant, does not control if circumstances have materially changed.
- A trial court may consider contempt findings and violations of court orders when weighing MCL 722.23 best-interest factors — including moral fitness and willingness to facilitate the other parent’s relationship with the child — so long as the court ties those findings to the child’s welfare rather than using custody as punishment.
- Repeated pursuit of unfounded abuse allegations, combined with refusal to accept cleared investigations and a history of defying court orders, can support both a restricted parenting time schedule and GPS-monitoring conditions.
Why It Matters
This decision illustrates how Michigan courts evaluate parental alienation and chronic non-compliance with custody orders in the context of a requested custody modification. The opinion makes clear that a parent who systematically undermines the other parent’s court-ordered time — even while asserting protective motivations — risks losing the custodial environment she built, because the statute’s focus is on the environment that actually exists when the court rules, not the one that existed before the parent’s own disruptive conduct intervened.
The case also provides a practical framework for distinguishing permissible reliance on contempt findings from impermissible punishment: courts may factor in a parent’s defiance of court orders when it directly harms the child’s interests, but must follow the full MCL 722.27(1) and MCL 722.23 analytical process. Practitioners representing either custodial or non-custodial parents in high-conflict relocation and alienation cases will find the court’s established-custodial-environment and parenting-time analyses instructive.