Background
John Weilbacher and Tiffany Funderburg, formerly Weilbacher, divorced in 2019 and entered an agreed shared-parenting plan for their two children. Both were residential parents and legal custodians, with Funderburg designated residential parent for school purposes after moving with the children to Alabama. The plan gave Weilbacher specified monthly, summer, holiday, and school-break parenting time.
In 2025, Weilbacher moved to modify the plan, alleging interference with his relationship with the children and seeking changes to parenting time. Funderburg missed the magistrate’s June hearing after misreading the date. At that hearing, Weilbacher testified that his heart condition limited his travel and, when asked, said he wanted the children to live with him. The trial court later adopted a magistrate’s decision naming him sole residential parent and legal custodian. Funderburg objected and appealed.
The Court’s Holding
The Tenth District reversed and reinstated the parties’ 2019 agreed shared-parenting plan. It held that the custody change was against the manifest weight of the evidence because the brief, one-sided magistrate hearing did not produce substantial, competent, and credible evidence supporting removal of the children from Funderburg, their primary caregiver for years.
The court rejected Funderburg’s notice-based arguments. The trial court had no legal duty to contact her after she missed the hearing, and Ohio law permitted modification or termination of the shared-parenting arrangement if the children’s best interests supported it. But the record did not support that outcome: the children were established in Alabama with their home, community, extended family, and siblings; they had spent little time with Weilbacher in Ohio; and the evidence showed he had not used all parenting time available under the existing plan, rather than that Funderburg had withheld it.
Key Takeaways
- A court may have authority to modify or terminate a shared-parenting plan, but the resulting custody decision must still rest on substantial, competent, credible evidence of the children’s best interests.
- A missed hearing does not require the court to contact the absent party, absent a legal duty to do so.
- Where the custody ruling is against the manifest weight of the evidence, an appellate court may render judgment and restore the prior parenting plan.
Why It Matters
The decision underscores the evidentiary burden before a domestic-relations court can make the drastic change of transferring sole custody. General concerns about a parent-child relationship and a request for more parenting time did not, on this record, justify uprooting children from their established home and primary caregiver.