S.U. v. C.J.
| Decision Date | 13 October 2021 |
| Docket Number | 20-0710,20-0515,20-0516,20-0612 |
| Court | Virginia Supreme Court |
| Parties | In re The Children of: S.U., Petitioner Below, Petitioner v. C.J., Respondent Below, Respondent and In re The Children of: S.U., Petitioner Below, Petitioner v. C.J., Respondent Below, Respondent and S.U., Petitioner Below, Petitioner v. C.J., Respondent Below, Respondent and S.U., Plaintiff Below, Petitioner v. C.J., Defendant Below, Respondent |
Self-represented petitioner S.U.[1] appeals four orders from the Circuit Court of Mason County: an April 9, 2020, order refusing his petition for appeal from the family court; an April 27, 2020 order addressing petitioner's motion for rulings on his remaining appeals and petitions for extraordinary writs; a July 21, 2020, order denying petitioner's second motion for decision on pending appeals and other issues; and an August 26, 2020, order again refusing petitioner's appeal from family court.[2] Respondent C.J. made no appearance before this Court. On appeal, petitioner raises several arguments in an attempt to obtain sole custody of three of his four children with respondent, including that the orders originating from family court are unconstitutional and the family court violated the children's privacy, among other arguments.
This Court has considered the parties' briefs and the record on appeal. The facts and legal arguments are adequately presented, and the decisional process would not be significantly aided by oral argument. Upon consideration of the standard of review, the briefs, and the record presented the Court finds no substantial question of law and no prejudicial error. For these reasons, a memorandum decision affirming the circuit court's order is appropriate under Rule 21 of the Rules of Appellate Procedure.
This Court has previously issued detailed memorandum decisions concerning the parties' relationship history and the facts surrounding their four children's births. See S.U. v. C.J. ("S.U. I"), No. 18-0566 2019 WL 5692550 (W.Va. Nov. 4, 2019)(memorandum decision); S.U. v. C.J. ("S.U. II"), No 19-1181, 2021 WL 365824 (W.Va. Feb. 2, 2021)(memorandum decision). Because of the limited arguments on appeal in the matters currently before the Court, it is unnecessary to belabor these facts. Instead, it is sufficient to stress two important rulings from these matters. The first is that there was never a valid, enforceable gestational surrogacy agreement between petitioner and respondent. S.U. I, No. 18-0566, 2019 WL 5692550, at *4 (). The second is that respondent "is the legal mother of all four children." Id. As has become clear through his repeated attacks on respondent's continued exercise of a maternal relationship with, and custody over, the children, petitioner refuses to accept the validity and finality of these determinations.
As the main issues to address in these appeals relate to the family court's cessation of petitioner's visits with the children and limitations on his ability to file pleadings, it is important to outline petitioner's conduct that resulted in these rulings. As early as 2016, the family court ordered that the parties not harass one another. Despite multiple orders to this effect, by 2017 petitioner first engaged in egregious behavior toward respondent. According to the family court, when the children's maternal grandmother passed away, petitioner contacted the local newspaper and the funeral home handling her arrangements to demand that they remove the minor children's names from the maternal grandmother's obituary. Petitioner told both entities that respondent was not related to the children and kidnapped them. Both the newspaper and funeral home informed respondent of the communications they had with petitioner, which caused respondent additional emotional distress at the time of her mother's passing. This was the first of many instances where the family court found petitioner to be in willful and contumacious contempt of a prior order against harassment and that he had the ability to follow the orders but failed to do so. Based on this conduct, the family court issued the first of several requirements that petitioner file a cash bond with the clerk to ensure future compliance with orders. The court also awarded respondent attorney's fees in the amount of $1, 500.
Following the family court's entry of the order setting forth custodial responsibility in February of 2018 that was at issue in S.U. I, petitioner was found to be in contempt of that order by multiple orders entered in 2018 and 2019. One order reduced petitioner's telephone contact with the children to only one day because of his abuse of the telephonic visits. Moving forward, respondent was required to record petitioner's telephone calls and immediately terminate a call if petitioner behaved inappropriately.
In late 2019, the family court held a hearing on the several competing petitions for contempt from both parties. Based on the evidence, the court found that petitioner "continues to speak to or about [r]espondent in a derogatory and demeaning manner," even going so far as to refer to her as "gestational surrogate" or "kidnapper"; continues to tell the children that respondent is not their mother and refuses to refer to the two youngest children by their legal names; tells the children that respondent prevented them from seeing him and that they would soon be coming home after petitioner's wife adopted them; and continued calling respondent's home on Tuesdays and Thursdays, even though his telephone contact on those nights was terminated, "for purposes of harassment." Importantly, the family court also determined that petitioner's continued behavior proved that he was "determined to undermine [r]espondent as a parent to the minor children" and that he "made no meaningful attempt to address or correct his behavior which is likely to cause irreparable harm to the minor children." According to the court, "it is clear . . . that [p]etitioner does not intend in any way to foster the existing parent-child relationship between [r]espondent and the minor children." Petitioner also failed to enroll and actively participate in counseling services as required by prior orders. The court found that it "would be manifestly harmful to the minor children to continue [p]etitioner's communication with them until [p]etitioner has actively and successfully completed counseling services." As such, the court suspended petitioner's remote visits with the children. In regard to petitioner's requests for contempt against respondent, the family court found that petitioner's allegations were unfounded because respondent only interrupted or terminated petitioner's telephone visitation when petitioner was behaving inappropriately. The family court again found petitioner in contempt, which appears to be approximately the fifth finding of contempt against him by this point in the proceedings. Finally, the court found that petitioner's conduct increased respondent's costs in the litigation, including his faxing to respondent's counsel almost all of petitioner's pleadings "and countless other documents," despite a prior order prohibiting him from doing so. As such, the court awarded respondent attorney's fees in the amount of $5, 000 and prohibited petitioner from filing self-represented pleadings. The court again directed that petitioner file certain bonds in order to ensure his compliance with its orders.
The family court then held a hearing in June of 2020 to address additional allegations of contempt against petitioner. In addressing these claims, the family court noted not only the prior prohibition against the parties making derogatory comments about the other in the presence of the children, but also that the parents were prohibited from referring to two of the children by names other than those on their birth certificates. Based on the evidence, the family court found that petitioner violated these directions by e-mailing staff at the Birth to Three program and stating that respondent was only a gestational surrogate, had kidnapped the children, and that the two youngest children's names were names other than their legal names; sending a letter to the principal of the children's elementary school that referred to respondent as a gestational surrogate, stating that petitioner was in the process of terminating her parental rights, and referring to one child by a name other than his legal name; and filing an emergency petition for modification in December of 2019 referring to the youngest children by incorrect names. According to the family court "[p]etitioner testified that he has 'freedom of speech and rights' and that it is irrelevant to him if [r]espondent feels she is being harassed." The court found that petitioner's behavior continued to prove that he was determined to undermine respondent as a parent and harass her by contacting and making inappropriate statements to school officials and healthcare providers for the children, as this conduct was ongoing since the inception of the case in 2016. Accordingly, the family court found that petitioner was in willful and contumacious contempt and had the ability to comply with the orders but refused. The court then awarded respondent attorney's fees in the amount of $5, 000. The court also suspended petitioner's ability to access...
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