COA: Trial court didn’t err when modifying parenting time based on basketball schedule

A parenting time modification that was granted to accommodate a teen’s summer time basketball program was not an abuse of discretion by the Johnson Circuit Court, the Court of Appeals of Indiana has dominated.

Moussa Henry Kante and Carrie E. Extended share a teenager, J.K, who was 14 for the duration of suitable proceedings. Extended, the mom, resides in Noblesville, even though Kante life in Texas.

In the drop of 2021, J.K. enrolled at Noblesville Large Faculty. J.K. is active in sports and aspires to play NCAA Division I faculty basketball.

Extensive preferred J.K. to stay in Indiana for the summer months of 2021 so that he could take part in summer season basketball coaching for the higher faculty and compete in AAU basketball. But that ran contrary to an April 2019 court get with regards to parenting time, whereby Kante was entitled to parenting time for “[s]even weeks of summer months break[.]” The prior purchase, issued although J.K. was nevertheless in center school, identified that, “… any parenting program will likely require to be modified to account for [J.K.’s] participation in high school athletics and the necessary character of summer season tactics and camps that are accompanied with those people pursuits.”

Long filed a petition to modify parenting time in February 2021, and Kante responded by filing a petition to modify spring split and slide split parenting time as nicely as a motion for contempt. Pursuing testimony, the demo courtroom entered its buy modifying parenting time in favor of the child’s basketball program.

On attractiveness, Kante argued the trial court’s modification was an abuse of discretion that “restricted” his parenting time.

But the COA located no abuse of discretion and established the buy was steady with the Indiana Parenting Time Guidelines and Indiana Code § 31-14-14-1.

“The events seem to agree that Father is entitled to sixty-5 times of parenting time for every calendar year, an amount of money steady with the Recommendations,” COA Decide Elizabeth Tavitas wrote. “Father’s calculations of the demo court’s parenting time award, even so, only incorporate the parenting time that would represent right away visitation in the State of Texas. Father cites no authority justifying this constraint on his calculations. “

Tavitas ongoing that the COA was “sympathetic” to Kante’s situation, as “Father expressed irritation at the troubles he faces in speaking proficiently with J.K. through cellular phone, as well as with the struggling of J.K.’s lecturers, a drop that Father characteristics to abnormal concentration on basketball.” Even so, the appellate courtroom discovered the demo court’s purchase was fair and in the very best pursuits of the little one.

“All of the appropriate elements ended up regarded as by the demo court docket when the court fashioned a parenting program primarily based on the particular circumstances of this situation,” Tavitas wrote. “To the extent that the parenting time get deviates from the Recommendations, the demo court docket discussed, in producing, why the deviation was correct. Father’s parenting time award is fair, and the demo courtroom was not required to make the factual obtaining contemplated by Indiana Code Segment 31-14-14-1.”

The situation is In the Subject of the Paternity of J.K.: Moussa Henry Kante v. Carrie E. Long, 21A-JP-1470.