Public-domain · open source
OpenJurist

102 Md. App. 1

North v. North

Court of Special Appeals of Maryland

Decided October 25, 1994

Court of Special Appeals of Maryland · decided 1994-10-25

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1994-10-25

How this case has been cited

Cited by 110 later decisions — most recently April 2024 · most notably In Re Adoption/Guardianship No. 3598 (1997), King v. State (2009)

109 state decisions

6201994200020102020decided

Later decisions citing this case, by decade. The current decade is in progress, and our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so the latest bars are undercounted — not a real decline.

View the full empirical analysis of this case →

MURPHY, Judge,

¶1dissenting.

¶2Although I agree with much in the majority opinion, I would affirm the circuit court and assess all costs—including the cost of appointed counsel—against Mr. North. The majority fails to see how a restriction on overnight visitation would abate the prohibited conduct because Mr. North could expose the children to homosexual displays of affection during daylight hours on Saturdays and Sundays. The chancellor obviously concluded that Mr. North would be less likely to engage in the prohibited conduct during those hours. That conclusion is not untenable. The fact that Mr. North could break his promise during the day does not require that he be given the opportunity to do so at night.

¶3The majority found no fault with the chancellor’s credibility determination. That determination is more than sufficient to *30support the conclusion that Mr. North’s visitation should be supervised at all times. It is true that the overnight visitation restriction cannot achieve the objective asserted for it by the circuit court. A restriction is reasonable, however, as long as it furthers a proper objective. This one does.

¶4It is now virtually certain that, on remand, Mr. North will either be denied unsupervised visitation of any duration or be granted unsupervised overnight visitation. We should not make it more difficult for the chancellor to arrive at a middle ground. On the findings of fact made in this case, the chancellor did not abuse her discretion by denying Mr. North’s request for overnight visitation.

/102/mdapp/1 · .json · Public domain