Facts: Father and Mother are unmarried parents who have been litigating custody and parenting-time issues for years.
Under a 2018 order, Mother relocated about 300 miles from Father’s home in Memphis to Jacksonville, Alabama. Father exercised parenting time on the first, third, and fifth weekends of each month, which required a five-hour one-way drive to exchange the children.
By the time Father petitioned to modify the parenting schedule in 2023, the children were older, about 11 and six years old at trial, and heavily involved in school and extracurricular activities. Both parents agreed that the existing arrangement, which required one parent to drive 10 hours round-trip for each weekend exchange, had become extremely burdensome.
Father asked to be named the primary residential parent or, alternatively, to receive more parenting time. He argued that the children were older, he could retire, and he had more time to spend with them and their extended family in Memphis.
Mother denied any material change warranting more parenting time for Father. She emphasized the children’s full schedules and Father’s perceived inflexibility, arguing that frequent weekend trips interfered with the children’s “band, cheerleading, piano, ballet, soccer, violin, and martial arts” activities.
Mother did not request a reduction in Father’s overall parenting time. She suggested, however, that if Father’s long drives were becoming too challenging because of his age, 71 at trial, the court could replace some weekend visits with longer blocks of summer parenting time or require Father to handle all transportation.
The juvenile court denied Father’s request to change custody but made significant changes to the residential schedule.
Father’s school-year parenting time was reduced to two weekends per month. Mother was allowed to determine the exact weekends, the exchange location, and whether the visits would begin Friday evening or Saturday morning, all “structured around the children’s activities.”
Father received expanded summer parenting time from the first Sunday after the school year until two weeks before the next school year, but only to the extent it did not conflict with the children’s “events and activities desired by the children over the summer.”
In effect, the new order allowed the children’s preferred activities and Mother’s discretion to determine when Father could exercise his summer and weekend parenting time.
The trial court also granted Mother sole decision-making authority for education and extracurricular activities and ordered Father to pay Mother’s attorney’s fees.
On Appeal: The Court of Appeals affirmed the denial of Father’s request to change custody but vacated the parenting-plan provisions that allowed the children’s preferences and Mother’s discretion to curtail Father’s parenting time.
In Tennessee, a final custody or parenting plan order generally cannot be modified absent a material change in circumstances affecting the child’s best interests. Once this threshold is met, a court must examine the statutory best-interest factors to determine an appropriate schedule.
One of those factors is the reasonable preference of a child at least twelve years old, if the child is mature enough to express a meaningful preference. Tennessee law is clear, however, that a child’s preference is only one factor and is never determinative by itself. Courts cannot allow a minor child to unilaterally decide whether or when to spend time with a parent. The Court of Appeals has consistently held that giving a child de facto control over visitation or custody is improper, regardless of the child’s age.
The Court of Appeals held that the trial court exceeded its discretion by effectively allowing the children’s wishes and Mother’s unilateral decisions to determine Father’s parenting time and travel obligations, and it ordered those provisions to be set aside and corrected.
The Court noted that a child’s preference can be considered when determining best interests, but it cannot control the outcome. The reasonable preference of a child 12 or older is only one statutory factor, not a veto over parenting time:
This Court is aware of no authority for permitting a child to have the discretion to decide when and whether to spend time with a parent. … Simply put, “A minor child cannot determine when he or she will see a parent.”
The Court modified the summer schedule to remove all provisions making Father’s summer parenting time “contingent upon Father making the children available for events and activities desired by the children over the summer.” Father’s summer parenting time remained “from 6:00 p.m. the first Sunday after end of school year until 6:00 p.m. the Sunday two weeks prior to the beginning of the school year.”
The Court also vacated the provisions that allowed Mother to decide whether Father’s weekend parenting time would begin on Friday evening or Saturday morning and where the exchanges would occur.
The Court reasoned that Mother’s discretion could reduce a weekend visit to about 36 hours while requiring Father to spend 20 of those hours transporting the children:
We conclude that shortening that time even further, by an additional day, is simply illogical given the distance between the parties, and it is not in the children’s best interest. We further conclude that the trial court’s ruling on transportation is outside the range of acceptable alternatives. It allows Mother to require Father to make the entire round-trip drive of ten hours on both days for a weekend visit.
Rather than remand for further litigation, the Court modified the order to require the parents to meet halfway for exchanges in Alabama, where they had previously agreed to exchange the children. The Court also set Father’s weekend parenting time for the first and third weekends of each month, with Friday exchanges at 6:30 p.m.
K.O.’s Comment: This case is a good reminder that children’s activities are important, but they are not more important than the parent-child relationship.
That can be hard for parents, judges, and lawyers to manage in real life. Children get older. Their schedules get fuller. Band, sports, lessons, clubs, and social events can quickly consume every weekend. But Tennessee law does not allow a child’s activities, preferences, or convenience to erase a parent’s court-ordered parenting time.
The tension is that Tennessee courts must consider the reasonable preference of a child 12 or older. In some cases, failing to consider that preference can be reversible error. But considering a child’s preference is not the same thing as letting the child decide. This case sits on that line and, in practical terms, says, “Listen to the child, but do not hand the child the pen.”
The same principle applies to extracurricular activities. A parent with decision-making authority for activities cannot use that authority to schedule over the other parent’s time. Decision-making authority does not include the power to nullify the residential schedule.
The transportation ruling is also practical. Long-distance parenting plans must be workable. If a plan requires one parent to drive 10 hours on Saturday and 10 hours on Sunday for a 36-hour visit, the plan is not merely inconvenient. It is approaching absurdity. The Court of Appeals was right to call that illogical.
The better practice is to build structure into the parenting plan. Identify the weekends. Identify the exchange location. Identify the exchange time. Allow flexibility by agreement, but do not make one parent’s time dependent on the other parent’s discretion or the child’s preferences.
Source: In re Troy R. (Tennessee Court of Appeals, Western Section, May 29, 2026).
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