M.Y. v. L.G.
| Decision Date | 10 May 2022 |
| Docket Number | 946-2021 |
| Parties | M.Y. v. L.G. |
| Court | Court of Special Appeals of Maryland |
Circuit Court for Prince George's County Case No CAD13-12909
Berger, Ripken, Wright, Alexander, Jr. (Senior Judge Specially Assigned), JJ.
This appeal arises from an order entered by the Circuit Court for Prince George's County, finding that the passport of the minor child of M.Y. ("Mother"), appellant, and L.G. ("Father"), appellee, had been lost, stolen, or misplaced -- so Father could request the issuance of a new passport from the U.S. Department of State -- after Mother refused to produce the passport to Father upon his repeated requests. We discern from Mother's informal brief that she claims procedural error in the circuit court's entry of the order, on the ground that the court improperly addressed the issue of the child's passport, when Mother understood the pertinent hearing would address Father's motion to hold her in contempt of court for attempting unscheduled and unsupervised visits with the child.[1] Although our review of the record reveals that the circuit court may have been mistaken as to what motion was scheduled to be argued during the pertinent hearing, we conclude that the issue of Mother's turning the child's passport over to Father was pending before the court as the result of a previous motion that had been held in abeyance by the court, and the court was entitled to rule on it. In light of that conclusion, we dismiss Mother's appeal because it is not taken from a final judgment or an appealable interlocutory order.
Mother and Father married in a civil ceremony in Virginia in 1999 and in a religious ceremony in Venezuela in 2000. They are the parents of two children, "L." (born 1/01) and "S." (born 9/08).
In October 2013, the circuit court issued a judgment of limited divorce, incorporating the parties' separation agreement and awarding Mother and Father joint legal custody and shared physical custody of L. and S. The court entered a judgment of absolute divorce in April 2015.
In July 2015, the circuit court granted Father's motion to incorporate an addendum to the separation agreement, thereby modifying the parents' custody access schedule but continuing their shared physical custody of the children. The addendum also outlined that one parent's travel outside the Washington, D.C., area with the then-minor children would require written permission from the other parent. Regarding the children's passports, the addendum specified that Mother would retain the U.S. passport for S. and Father would retain the U.S. passport for L. "until requested by the other parent for travel or other necessary purposes," so that neither parent could take the children out of the country without the permission of the other parent.[2]
In May 2019, Mother filed a motion for modification of the custody order, requesting primary physical custody and sole legal custody of S.[3] Father filed an opposition to Mother's motion, along with his own motion for modification, claiming that Mother had violated the terms of the addendum to the separation agreement on multiple occasions.
On December 2, 2019, the circuit court heard argument on the competing motions for modification. Thereafter, the circuit court issued an order denying Mother's motion and granting Father's motion. The trial court specified that Mother and Father would continue to share legal custody but that Father would have sole physical custody of S., with Mother having one-hour supervised visitation every other Monday. Mother timely appealed that order.[4]
In January 2020, Father filed another motion for modification, contending that shared custody had become too difficult since Mother had chosen to relocate to Texas. He also requested that the circuit court order Mother to give him S.'s passport for a planned July 2020 trip to Taiwan, after she had refused his requests to do so on numerous occasions. Mother responded to Father's motion, and in June 2020, filed her own motions, one for modification of the court's December 2, 2019, order, asking for a return to shared physical custody of S., and one for contempt, alleging that she had moved back to Maryland but Father was not permitting her to visit with S. On September 30, 2020, Father filed a motion to terminate Mother's visitation rights and to obtain S.'s passport from Mother, after Mother continued to refuse to provide it to him.
The circuit court held a hearing on January 7, 2021, regarding both parties' pending motions. On January 20, 2021, the court issued an order denying Mother's motion for modification, Mother's motion for contempt, and Father's motion for modification. The trial court further ordered that, despite its belief that Mother would not likely voluntarily give Father the passport, it would hold Father's motion to obtain S.'s passport in abeyance "until international travel is no longer impacted by travel restrictions due to COVID-19" because it would not be in the child's best interest to "even entertain international travel at this point."
Mother appealed the court's order. Mother's two appeals were consolidated in this Court and considered in our unreported opinion in M.Y. v. L.G., no. 1201, September Term 2020 (filed October 7, 2021), cert. denied sub nom. Yilo v. Gan, 477 Md. 397 (2022). Therein, we affirmed the circuit court's orders.
On January 12, 2021, Father filed a motion for contempt against Mother, alleging that Mother had come to his house and tried to gain unsupervised access of S. outside her court-ordered supervised visitation times. Also on January 12, 2021, Father filed a motion to modify the addendum to the separation agreement, arguing that the travel restrictions the agreement imposed on S. should be removed because S. was in his sole custody. He, therefore, requested that he be permitted to retain both S.'s U.S. and Venezuelan passports and that the court order Mother to turn over S.'s passports within seven days.
On June 9, 2021, the circuit court scheduled a hearing for August 23, 2021, and issued a show cause order requiring Mother to respond as to why the court should not grant Father's requested relief in his motion for contempt. Mother responded to the show cause order on August 17, 2021, stating there was no evidence she had violated the court order relating to visitation because "DSS is not involved anymore," so L. or Father could supervise her visits with S.
Mother was not served with Father's motion to modify until August 20, 2021. The writ of summons required her to file a written response to the motion within 30 days. In her response to Father's motion, Mother explained that "the time was not appropriate for [S.] to travel due to COVID-19." She also argued that the circuit court should not make any changes to the addendum to the separation agreement while the court's December 2, 2019, and January 7, 2021, orders were the subject of an appeal then pending in this Court.
At the start of the August 23, 2021, hearing, the circuit court noted that both pro se parties "are here remotely on this Motion for Contempt" and requested the status of the "old issue . . . surrounding the passport." Father told the court that the status had not changed, in that Mother had not given him S.'s passport and would not permit the child to travel internationally.
When the court asked Mother if she had anything to add, the following colloquy occurred:
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