Taulo-Millar v. Hognason, S-21-0056

• Court: United States State Supreme Court of Wyoming
• Citation: 501 P.3d 1274
• Decision Date: 14 January 2022
• Parties: Vanessa TAULO-MILLAR, Appellant (Respondent), v. Kormakur HOGNASON, Appellee (Petitioner).
• Docket Number: S-21-0056

501 P.3d 1274

Vanessa TAULO-MILLAR, Appellant (Respondent),
v.
Kormakur HOGNASON, Appellee (Petitioner).

S-21-0056

Supreme Court of Wyoming.

January 14, 2022

Representing Appellant: Rennie Phillips, Rennie Phillips Law, LLC, Laramie, Wyoming.

Representing Appellee: No appearance.

Before FOX, C.J., and DAVIS, KAUTZ, BOOMGAARDEN, and GRAY, JJ.

KAUTZ, Justice.

¶1] Vanessa Taulo-Millar (Mother) and Kormakur Hognason (Father) are the parents of a daughter, FIH. The district court awarded Father sole custody of FIH, subject to Mother's supervised visitation. After Father and FIH moved, Father filed a petition to change the location of Mother's supervised visitation. Mother counterclaimed, requesting her visitation with FIH no longer be supervised. The court changed the location of Mother's visitation but decided lifting the supervision requirement was not in FIH's best interests. We conclude the district court did not abuse its discretion or violate Mother's constitutional right to familial association by denying her request to end supervised visitation.

ISSUES

[¶2] Mother raises four issues, which we re-state as two:

1. Did the district court abuse its discretion when it denied Mother's request to end supervised visitation?

2. Did the district court violate Mother's constitutional right to familial association by failing to provide a means by which she can graduate to unsupervised visitation?

[501 P.3d 1278

FACTS

¶3] Mother is a native of Africa and a naturalized United States citizen. Father is a native of Iceland and also a naturalized United States citizen. Mother and Father met while both were graduate students in the school of pharmacy at the University of Wyoming. At that time, Mother was widowed, suffered from depression, and was HIV positive. Mother and Father became sexually involved and conceived FIH. Mother failed to inform Father she was HIV positive before they became intimate.

[¶4] FIH was born on June 9, 2014, in Colorado. Mother gave FIH Mother's last name and did not include Father's name on the birth certificate. Six months later, Mother took FIH to Father's home seeking his help in caring for FIH. Mother was overwhelmed and emotionally distraught. When law enforcement arrived, Mother became aggressive and hysterical. The officers arrested Mother for breach of the peace. Mother was eventually expelled from the school of pharmacy.

[¶5] In January 2015, Mother filed a petition to establish paternity, custody, visitation, and support. Father filed a counterclaim seeking custody of FIH. The matter proceeded to a bench trial in July 2015. The court decided it was in FIH's best interests for Mother and Father to share legal custody but for Father to have physical custody of FIH. See Wyo. Stat. Ann. § 20-2-201(a) (LexisNexis 2021). While it recognized to that point Father had less contact and involvement with FIH, it found Mother was mentally unstable and was more likely to "exclude [FIH] from [Father]’s life than vice versa." The court awarded Mother visitation with FIH the first weekend of each month, from 9:00 a.m. on Saturday to 5:00 p.m. on Sunday. It also allowed Mother to exercise visitation an additional weekend each month so long as she provided timely notice of her intention to do so.

[¶6] Two weeks later, Father filed a "Motion to Suspend Visitation and Request for Emergency Hearing" because Mother had secured a fraudulent passport for FIH and expressed her intention to take FIH to Africa. The court heard the motion, confiscated the passport, and alerted the relevant federal authorities, who agreed to keep FIH's name in their database in an effort to prevent anyone from attempting to obtain a fraudulent passport for FIH.

[¶7] Approximately two months later, Casper police arrested Mother for driving under the influence of alcohol (DUI) after she drove her vehicle, with FIH inside, into another vehicle. Mother's blood alcohol concentration was 0.16. A Casper police officer described Mother's behavior at the scene as manic, rapidly alternating between calm and hysterical. When officers asked Mother for Father's contact information, she refused to provide it to them.

[¶8] Father immediately filed a "Motion to Modify Custody and Visitation and Request for Hearing." The court issued a temporary order requiring Mother's visitation with FIH to be supervised until it could hear Father's motion. It also reduced her twice-per-month visitations to four hours each weekend, two hours on Saturday and two hours on Sunday.

[¶9] The court heard Father's motion in January 2016. It found the DUI incident alone constituted a material change in circumstances since its previous custody order. However, it also noted the occurrence of several other events in which Mother had demonstrated an inability to co-parent and to place FIH's best interests above her own. Those events included Mother's plan to remove FIH from the United States without Father's knowledge or consent, her securing of a passport for FIH also without Father's knowledge or consent, her bizarre and irrational communications with FIH's daycare providers, her secret recording of her conversations with Father and FIH's doctors, daycare providers and Medicaid workers, her criticism of Father and FIH's hair during a Skype visitation with FIH, her multiple moves between various cities in Wyoming and Colorado, and her unsubstantiated reporting of Father to the Laramie Police Department for stealing her personal belongings and to the Department of Family Services (DFS) for child abuse because FIH had diaper rash.

[¶10] After weighing the § 20-2-201(a) factors, the court concluded it was no longer in FIH's best interests for Mother and Father

[501 P.3d 1279

to share legal custody and awarded Father sole legal and physical custody of FIH. It also made the temporary visitation order permanent. In so concluding, the court found Father had "risen to the challenge of co-parenting [FIH]" and had improved his parenting skills. It also found Father was a loving and appropriate parent and adequately cared for and tended to FIH's needs. With respect to Mother's visitation, the court noted Mother had taken steps in the right direction, including starting counseling, taking medications to treat her anxiety and depression, and allegedly ceasing to consume alcohol. Nevertheless, the court found Mother's conduct presented significant safety concerns and FIH was not safe with Mother without supervision.

¶11] Mother's supervised visitation with FIH initially occurred in Casper, where Father and FIH resided. In 2017, Father and FIH moved to Newcastle and supervised visitation was moved to Gillette. At all times, Mother lived in Golden, Colorado, five to six hours away from Gillette. She either flew to Gillette or rented a car to participate in visitation.

[¶12] In September 2018, Father and FIH, along with Father's new wife, moved to Worland for employment reasons. Father continued to drive FIH three to four hours one-way to attend visitation with Mother in Gillette. During the winter of 2018, Father's vehicle slid off the road twice due to bad weather. In October 2019, Father filed a petition to modify visitation, seeking to move Mother's supervised visitation with FIH from Gillette to Worland. Mother counterclaimed, requesting her visitation with FIH no longer be supervised. After a one-day bench trial, the court concluded Father's move to Worland constituted a material change in circumstances since its previous order. After considering the § 20-2-201(a) factors, the court found it was in FIH's best interests that Father retain custody of FIH, Mother's visitation with FIH be moved to Worland, and Mother's visitation with FIH remain supervised.

[¶13] Mother timely appealed. Father did not file a brief.

STANDARD OF REVIEW

[¶14] "We ‘review orders modifying custody, visitation[,] and child support for an abuse of discretion ....’ " Paden v. Paden , 2017 WY 118, ¶ 6, 403 P.3d 135, 138 (Wyo. 2017) (quoting Greer v. Greer , 2017 WY 35, ¶ 19, 391 P.3d 1127, 1133 (Wyo. 2017), and Tracy v. Tracy , 2017 WY 17, ¶ 46, 388 P.3d 1257, 1267 (Wyo. 2017) ). "Judicial discretion is composed ‘of many things, among which are conclusions drawn from objective criteria’ and ‘means exercising sound judgment with regard to what is right under the circumstances and without doing so arbitrarily and capriciously.’ " Id . (quoting Aragon v. Aragon , 2005 WY 5, ¶ 7, 104 P.3d 756, 759 (Wyo. 2005) ). "We ‘will not disturb an order regarding custody or visitation so long as the court could reasonably conclude as it did.’ " Id . (quoting Greer , ¶ 19, 391 P.3d at 1133 ). See also, Kimzey v. Kimzey , 2020 WY 52, ¶ 27, 461 P.3d 1229, 1238 (Wyo. 2020) (" ‘A court does not abuse its discretion unless it acts in a manner which exceeds the bounds of reason under the circumstances.’ " (quoting Jacobson v. Kidd , 2018 WY 108, ¶ 14, 426 P.3d 813, 820 (Wyo. 2018) (other citations omitted)).

[¶15] Our review of the reasonableness of a district court's custody and visitation orders " ‘entails evaluation of the sufficiency of the evidence to support the district court's decision[.]’ " Kimzey , ¶ 27, 461 P.3d at 1238 (quoting Jacobson , ¶ 14, 426 P.3d at 820 (other citations omitted)). In evaluating the evidence, "[w]e consider the evidence in the light most favorable to the district court's decision, ‘affording every favorable inference to the prevailing party and omitting from our consideration the conflicting evidence.’ " Bishop...