Listen To The Judge!
As an Ocean Springs divorce lawyer, I don’t know why I have to keep saying this.
You MUST listen to the Judge.
You can’t do what you want to do.
If the Judge isn’t telling you to do something illegal or immoral, then just do whatever he or she says.
The Mississippi Court of Appeals discusses this crazy case in one of their latest opinions.
Elizabeth Estes and Kevin McKeown used to live in New York.
Elizabeth gets custody of their kid and moves to Oxford, Mississippi.
Kevin stays in New York.
The New York Court tells Kevin he must give Elizabeth advance notice of his visitation, an itinerary, and the address where he would be staying with their son.
Do you think Kevin does this?
Nope.
Kevin decides, in his infinite wisdom, to do what he wants.
The Lafayette County Chancery Court finds Kevin in
contempt for his failure to fulfill the notice, itinerary, and address-disclosure requirements of the New York visitation order.
The Judge then says Kevin doesn’t get visitation until he gives his physical address. The Judge then changed the visitation order so that Kevin would have to exercise his visitation in Mississippi if he did not fulfill the notice, itinerary, and address-disclosure conditions of his visitation.
Was the chancery court judge right?
To try and get around this Order, Kevin appeals and claims that the chancellor should not have heard Allison’s complaint because he had taken preliminary steps to appeal the New York County Family
Court’s decision that Mississippi was the proper forum for Elizabeth’s complaint.
He also claims that the process server lies about personally serving him with process (that’s where you get served with a complaint to appear in Court). Finally, Kevin argues that the chancellor did not consider the child’s best interest.
So to back track a bit, In April 2012, a New York state court awarded Allison sole legal and physical custody of her son. After obtaining permission from the First Department of the New York Supreme
Court, Appellate Division, Elizabeth and the kid move to Oxford, where her family lives.
The New York County Family Court subsequently entered a visitation order. Along with visitation during certain holidays, Kevin received “eight uninterrupted weeks” of summer visitation. Kevin was obligated to provide Allison with notice regarding their son’s travel arrangements.
If either parent traveled with the child, he or she was obligated to
provide the other with an itinerary for the trip, including contact information and the location where the child would be staying.
If Kevin did not have his own house, he had to provide Elizabeth with an affidavit from the legal resident of the home where the child is staying which says the resident is willing and available to have Kevin and his son as guests.
In November 2014, Elizabeth files a complaint in Court. She claimed that Kevin was in contempt of the New York visitation order because he would not give her an itinerary for his visitation or an affidavit from the resident where he and the child would be staying during visitation.
Elizabeth also asked the chancery court judge to change the visitation order so that Kevin would be required to inform her of his physical address by giving her “a copy of his valid driver[’]s license . . . prior to exercising any visitation.”
At least five summonses were issued for Kevin between November 14, 2014, and December 29, 2014. All of them show his mailing address was a post-office box in New York City. The process server gets a copy of the complaint to Kevin on February 6, 2015.
Kevin says the New York process server, attorney David Chidekel, lies about personally serving him with process. He sends the Judge a 2003 article from the New York Daily News reporting a third-party claim that Chidekel had “admitted he was lying to help a client” in an unrelated criminal matter.
Elizabeth testifies that she did not want to reduce or modify the amount of Kevin’s visitation, but he had not been complying with the New York visitation order. More specifically, she say Kevin had not given her adequate notice regarding when he planned to exercise his summer visitation. Although Kevin was supposed to tell her when he would exercise his summer visitation by May 1, he did not send her notice until “the middle of June.” And the New York visitation order obligated Kevin to provide Elizabeth with an itinerary, but he initially refused to do so. He later sent an itinerary with which he did not comply so Elizabeth “never knew where [her son] was for a good portion of
the month or so that he was” with Kevin.
Elizabeth wants to pick up her son up from the airport on the day Kevin says he’s coming back but Kevin calls and says their son would not be coming back that day.
For the next week, Elizabeth can’t contact Kevin or her son.
So, one of the issues on appeal is whether the process server is a lying scumbag or is Kevin.
Kevin says that since Chidekel supossedly about serving him with process; so the chancellor erred when he heard Allison’s complaint.
Kevin makes the mistake that I see a lot of unrepresented people make.
He doesn’t know what he is doing and gets slammed on this issue. The Court of Appeals said, since Kevin failed to cite any case to support this claim, he loses. The Court points out that if a process server fills out what is called a “return” properly, there is a presumption that service of process has occurred.”
Kevin next argues that the decision isn’t in the best interest of the child.
I’ll bet you see where this is going.
Kevin does not attempt to explain how those conditions are somehow not in the kid’s best interest, or how they could negatively impact his relationship with his son. Kevin also fails to bring the kid back when he wasy he would and then Elizabeth can’t contact him.
So Kevin loses on this issue also.
The bottom line: You can’t just do what you want.
You MUST listen to the Judge or you’ll face Judge like the one below:
