Bradshaw v. Pelley-Whelan

456 P.3d 765

Cairo BRADSHAW, Appellant,

v.Christopher PELLEY-WHELAN, Appellee.

No. 20181003-CA

Court of Appeals of Utah.

Filed December 12, 2019

Theodore R. Weckel, Salt Lake City, Attorney for Appellant

Jennifer L. Falk, Cassie J. Medura, Jarrod H. Jennings, and Adrienne Nash Wiseman, Attorneys for Appellee

Judge David N. Mortensen authored this Opinion, in which Judges Michele M. Christiansen Forster and Jill M. Pohlman concurred.

Opinion

MORTENSEN, Judge:

¶1 "Facts are stubborn things."¹ In this appeal, Cairo Bradshaw asks us to reverse the district court's legal conclusion that it lacked subject matter jurisdiction to make an initial custody determination concerning her minor child (Child) under the Utah Uniform Child Custody Jurisdiction and Enforcement Act (UCCJEA). The crux of Bradshaw's argument is that the district court erroneously determined that Child's home state is California. Specifically, Bradshaw argues that the court's error lies in its conclusion that Child was only temporarily absent from California during the relevant six-month period leading up to when Bradshaw filed her parentage petition in Utah. However, Bradshaw assumes facts that were not adopted by the district court. And what's more, Bradshaw does not challenge the court's actual findings of fact. Accordingly, Bradshaw falls short of showing that the district court's legal conclusion concerning subject matter jurisdiction was erroneous as a matter of law. Therefore, we affirm.

BACKGROUND

¶2 Bradshaw and Christopher Pelley-Whelan are the parents of Child, who was born in California on July 2, 2016. On October 10, 2017, Bradshaw filed a parentage petition in Utah requesting that the court make an initial custody determination of Child. Pelley-Whelan filed a motion to dismiss Bradshaw's petition for lack of subject matter jurisdiction under the UCCJEA on the ground that Child's home state was California, not Utah.²

¶3 On March 13, 2018, after reviewing the pleadings and conducting a hearing, a commissioner deemed Child's home state to be California and recommended that the Utah court dismiss Bradshaw's petition for lack of jurisdiction. Bradshaw objected to the commissioner's recommendation as authorized by rule 108(a) of the Utah Rules of Civil Procedure.

¶4 After the commissioner recommended that the district court deny her parentage petition, Bradshaw, in a separate case, filed a petition for a protective order against Pelley-Whelan, alleging two incidents of abuse which had taken place several months earlier in Massachusetts and two weeks earlier in California. On June 13, 2018, a commissioner recommended that Bradshaw's petition for a protective order be denied. Bradshaw objected to the recommendation and requested that the objections to the parentage petition and the protective order be consolidated.

¶5 On June 20, 2018, the parties presented oral argument on jurisdiction and the protective order. Bradshaw primarily argued the district court should exercise jurisdiction under the UCCJEA because Utah, not California, was Child's home state. In the alternative, Bradshaw argued that Child had no home state. Finally, she argued the court should exercise emergency jurisdiction under the UCCJEA because the allegations of abuse in the protective order illustrated a risk of danger for Child. Pelley-Whelan argued that Child's home state was California because Child was born in California and had lived there ever since. The court set an evidentiary hearing to determine Child's home state for the six-month period leading up to the time Bradshaw filed her parentage petition in Utah—April 9 through October 9, 2017.

¶6 At the evidentiary hearing, Bradshaw offered the following evidence in support of her petition: (1) documents showing that Bradshaw purchased a home in Utah in January 2016, and paid $1,000 in expenses to move personal possessions from Pelley-Whelan and Bradshaw's home in Huntington Beach, California; (2) tax documents showing that Bradshaw filed state income tax returns in Utah for the years 2016 and 2017; (3) credentials showing that Bradshaw maintained a Utah driver license and voter registration certificate; (4) a table showing Bradshaw's credit card transactions in Utah; (5) a table showing Bradshaw's flights to Utah; and (6) pictures showing Child and Child's belongings in Utah or at Bradshaw's Utah house.

¶7 Pelley-Whelan offered rebuttal evidence in support of his position that Child's home state for the relevant period was California. Specifically, Pelley-Whelan offered evidence that (1) Child was born in California and remained there for at least six to eight weeks; (2) Child's doctor is in California; (3) Child was enrolled in ballet class in California; (4) although Bradshaw had purchased a home in Utah, she continued to own and live in the Huntington Beach, California home, which Pelley-Whelan had spent $90,000 renovating in anticipation of Child's birth; (5) Bradshaw and Pelley-Whelan jointly owned a second property in Big Bear, California; (6) Bradshaw's phone records indicate that she was in Utah for only fifty-five days during the entire 2017 year; and (7) the majority of Child's belongings remained in California.

¶8 Bradshaw also raised the protective order at the evidentiary hearing, but only to point out that it was "relevant in terms of whether Utah should invoke jurisdiction" over the custody dispute. While the court did allow some testimony on the protective order—such as the location of the alleged instances of abuse—it limited many questions and indeed barred one of Bradshaw's witnesses from discussing specific details of the alleged abuse that occurred in Massachusetts. At the close of the evidentiary hearing, the district court asked the parties to submit additional briefing on both the jurisdictional issue and the protective order.

¶9 The district court entered a written order denying Bradshaw's objections on November 15, 2018. Therein, the court made the following findings: (1) in light of the fact that Bradshaw maintained two homes in California, and the fact that she purchased a home in Utah and spent $1,000 to move personal possessions from California to Utah, did not indicate that she intended to, or did, relocate to Utah; (2) although Bradshaw offered evidence that she periodically worked from her Utah home, that evidence was incomplete as to when or how often she actually did; (3) competing evidence demonstrated that the majority of Child's belongings are in California; (4) evidence that Pelley-Whelan spent $90,000 to remodel the Huntington Beach house in anticipation of Child and Bradshaw residing in California was credible; (5) Bradshaw's tax return evidence did not demonstrate that she had relocated to Utah because although Bradshaw filed Utah income tax returns for the years 2016 and 2017, both of those returns were prepared by a California accountant, the 2016 return showed that Bradshaw received a credit because she claimed to be a resident of another state, and Bradshaw used her California driver license when she filed the 2017 return; (6) Bradshaw's Utah driver license and voter registration credentials were issued after October 9, 2017, and therefore did not show that Bradshaw had relocated to Utah during the relevant time period; (7) Bradshaw redacted and/or omitted large sections of her flight history and credit card information, and therefore this evidence was not credible to show that Bradshaw had relocated to Utah; and (8) Pelley-Whelan's phone record analysis was credible and showed that Bradshaw was in Utah for only fifty-five days in all of 2017, and thus was not in Utah for the majority of the relevant six-month period.

¶10 The district court found that "[Bradshaw] has presented insufficient evidence to establish that either California is no longer [Child's] home state or that Utah is now [Child's] home state." Citing Garba v. Ndiaye , 227 Md.App. 162, 132 A.3d 908 (2016), the court also concluded that Child was only ever temporarily absent from California and that California was therefore Child's home state for the relevant six-month period. Thus, the court concluded that it lacked jurisdiction under the UCCJEA and dismissed Bradshaw's parentage petition. The court also denied Bradshaw's petition for a protective order, stating that "the evidence does not support the entry of a protective order."

¶11 Bradshaw appeals.³

ISSUE AND STANDARD OF REVIEW

¶12 Bradshaw contends that the district court erred in concluding that Child's home state was California and in turn concluding that it lacked subject matter jurisdiction under the UCCJEA. "Both jurisdictional questions and questions of statutory interpretation are questions of law that we review for correctness," Meyeres v. Meyeres , 2008 UT App 364, ¶ 3, 196 P.3d 604 (cleaned up), "though we will review the [district] court's underlying findings of fact using the clearly erroneous standard," In re W.A. , 2002 UT 127, ¶ 8, 63 P.3d 607 (cleaned up).⁴

ANALYSIS

¶13 Bradshaw challenges the district court's conclusion that Child's home state is California and that any time Child spent outside of California was only a "temporary absence." The UCCJEA provides: "Except as otherwise provided in Section 78B-13-204, a court of this state has jurisdiction to make an initial child custody determination only if: (a) this state is the home state of the child on the date of the commencement of the proceeding ...." Utah Code Ann. § 78B-13-201(1) (LexisNexis 2018). The UCCJEA defines "home state" as

the state in which a child lived with a parent or a person acting as a parent for at least six consecutive months immediately before the commencement of a child custody proceeding. In the case of a child less than six months of age, the term means the state in which the child lived from birth with any of the persons mentioned. A period of temporary absence of any of the mentioned persons is part of the period.

Id. § 78B-13-102(7).

¶14 Here, the district court...