In Maryland family law, the term legal custody refers to the parent or parents that make certain long-term decisions about their child’s education, medical care, religion, and other issues of major significance. Legal custody is distinct from residential or physical custody, which addresses which parent will live with the child and make more routine day-to-day decisions regarding their care.

With respect to legal custody, the court may award sole legal custody to one parent or joint legal custody to both. In a joint legal custody situation, both parents have an “equal voice” in making long-term decisions for their child. This means the parents are expected to work together.

Of course, there are times when even the most well-meaning parents in a joint custody situation reach an impasse. To address this possibility, a Maryland court may grant “tie-breaking” authority to one parent in a joint legal custody arrangement. As the Maryland Court of Appeals has explained, tie-breaking authority does not mean that a parent has a greater voice in decision-making. Instead, the tie-breaker parent “cannot make the final call until after weighing in good faith the ideas the other parent has expressed regarding their children.”

Court of Special Appeals Finds Order Regarding Tie-Breaking Authority “Ambiguous”

Because tie-breaking authority nevertheless clearly “tilts” the playing field in favor of one parent, it is important that judges are clear when deciding to award–or rescind–tie-breaking authority. This subject came up in a recent decision from the Maryland Court of Special Appeals. In Davis v. Turner, a mother and father divorced in 2014. The parties negotiated a settlement that was incorporated into a final court order.

As relevant here, the agreement provided the parents would have joint legal custody over their minor children, with the mother having tie-breaking authority over “all matters related to the education” of the children. The parents further agreed to consult with a third-party to resolve any conflicts regarding other long-term issues, such as medical care or religion.

About five years after the divorce became final, the parents returned to court. The mother moved to hold the father in contempt of the original order. The father filed his own counter-motion. Among the issues involved was a disagreement over whether the children should attend private school.

During a hearing on the petitions, the judge seemed to indicate that the mother had not acted properly in exercising her tie-breaking authority on this issue. Both sides apparently believed the judge intended to remove the mother’s authority. But the court’s final order did not explicitly do so. The Court of Special Appeals subsequently held that the judge’s order was “ambiguous” on this point and returned the case to the lower court for clarification.

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This article has been provided by the Law Office of Robert Castro. For more information or questions contact our office to speak to an experienced lawyer at (301) 870-1200.

Source:

https://www.courts.state.md.us/sites/default/files/unreported-opinions/0445s21.pdf