The Tennessee Supreme Court has reinstated a trial court’s decision to designate a teenage boy’s mother as his primary residential parent.
The boy and his teenage sister were living in Richmond, Virginia with their parents when the parents decided to separate in 2011. His mother anticipated moving back to Chattanooga, her hometown, following the separation, and she expected that both children would live with her because she had raised them as a stay-at-home mother.
However, shortly before the move, the father insisted that his son should remain with him. Accordingly, the father and son moved to Brentwood, while the mother and the daughter moved to Chattanooga.
At the divorce trial in Chattanooga, both parents sought custody of their son. The guidance counselor at the boy’s school in Brentwood testified by telephone about the difficulties the boy was having at school and stated that living with his mother rather than his father would be in the boy’s best interest. The trial court relied on this testimony and other evidence in deciding that the boy should live with his mother.
The boy’s father appealed, and the Court of Appeals reversed the trial court’s custody decision. The appellate court decided that the trial court should not have based its decision on the guidance counselor’s testimony. After deciding that it was not required to defer to the trial court’s decision regarding the importance of the guidance counselor’s testimony over the telephone, the appellate court did not give any weight to the counselor’s testimony.
In a unanimous opinion, the Tennessee Supreme Court decided that even though the rules did not expressly authorize witnesses to testify by telephone, the evidence could have been considered because the parents had agreed to permit the guidance counselor to testify by telephone. The Court also decided that appellate courts should treat the testimony of a telephonic witness the same way they treat live in-court testimony. Therefore, the Court held that the appellate court should have deferred to the trial court’s decisions regarding the credibility of the guidance counselor and the importance of her testimony.
Read the opinion in Terri Ann Kelly v. Willard Reed Kelly, authored by Justice William C. Koch, Jr.