Matter of Taylor v. Fry

• Decision Date: 24 January 2008
• Docket Number: 500254.
• Citation: 2008 NY Slip Op 00387,47 A.D.3d 1130,849 N.Y.S.2d 724
• Parties: In the Matter of JEFFREY TAYLOR, Appellant, v. TASHA FRY, Respondent. (And Two Other Related Proceedings.)
• Court: New York Supreme Court — Appellate Division

47 A.D.3d 1130

849 N.Y.S.2d 724

2008 NY Slip Op 00387

In the Matter of JEFFREY TAYLOR, Appellant, v. TASHA FRY, Respondent. (And Two Other Related Proceedings.)

500254.

Appellate Division of the Supreme Court of the State of New York, Third Department.

Decided January 24, 2008.

Appeal from an order of the Family Court of Broome County (Pines, J.), entered January 6, 2006, which, among other things, granted respondent's application, in three proceedings pursuant to Family Ct Act articles 6 and 8, for custody of the parties' child.

Spain, J.

Petitioner (hereinafter the father) and respondent (hereinafter the mother) are the parents of a child born in 2004. Following cross petitions seeking custody and visitation and a family offense petition filed by the mother against the father, the parties stipulated that custody would be with the mother and a fact-finding hearing ensued in January 2006 on the issues of visitation and the alleged family offense. Thereafter, Family Court awarded sole custody of the child to the mother and supervised visitation to the father, under the direct supervision of the maternal grandmother, and found that the father had committed a family offense justifying the issuance of an order of protection. The father appeals, challenging only Family Court's finding that supervised visitation was necessary and that the supervision be by the maternal grandmother, rather than the father's sister.

We affirm. The determination of whether visitation should be supervised is a matter "left to Family Court's sound discretion and it will not be disturbed as long as there is a sound and substantial basis in the record to support it" (Matter of Roe v Roe, 33 AD3d 1152, 1155 [2006]; see Matter of Custer v Slater, 2 AD3d 1227, 1228 [2003]). On appeal, the father does not challenge Family Court's finding that he is guilty of a family offense involving harassing acts toward the mother or the propriety of the resulting order of protection against him. Further, upon our review of the record, we find ample evidence to support Family Court's findings that the father was guilty of past acts of domestic violence against the mother, that he has two prior convictions involving domestic violence against the mother of his other child and that he failed to cooperate with previous efforts by the local family and children's agency to schedule supervised visitation up until the point that visitation was terminated and, thus, that it is in the child's best interests that visitation be supervised (see Matter of Custer v Slater, 2 AD3d at 1228; Matter of Simpson v Simrell, 296 AD2d 621,...