130 Ohio App. 3d 648 - Clark v. Smith’s Empirical Analysis
1998
Citation profile
73 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 73 later decisions — most recently September 2025 · most notably 136 Ohio App. 3d 599 - Rohrbaugh v. Rohrbaugh (2000), 152 Ohio App. 3d 174 - Bragg v. Hatfield (2003)
73 state decisions
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.
Relationships
Relies on Blakemore v. Blakemore · Seasons Coal Co. v. City of Cleveland · C. E. Morris Co. v. Foley Construction Co. · Davis v. Flickinger · Booth v. Booth
Most-quoted passages
The sentences later courts lift from this opinion, ranked by how many decisions quote each — the parts of the opinion doing the work. These counts are smaller than the citation total above because most of the 73 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“The court shall not modify a prior decree allocating parental rights and responsibilities for the care of children unless it finds, based on facts that have arisen since the prior decree or that *Page 4 were unknown to the court at the time of the prior decree, that a change has occurred in the circumstances of the child, the child's residential parent, or either of the parents subject to a shared parenting decree, and that the modification is necessary to serve the best interest of the child. In applying these standards, the court shall retain the residential parent designated by the prior decree or the prior shared parenting decree, unless a modification is in the best interest of the child and one of the following applies: (i) The residential parent agrees to a change in the residential parent or both parents under a shared parenting decree agree to a change in the designation of residential parent. (ii) The child, with the consent of the residential parent or of both parents under a shared parenting decree, has been integrated into the family of the person seeking to become the residential parent. (iii) The harm likely to be caused by a change of environment is outweighed by the advantages of the change of environment to the child.”
4 later decisions quote this exact passage““R.C. 3109.04 requires a finding of a ‘change in circumstances.’ Such a determination when made by a trial judge should not be disturbed, absent an abuse of discretion. In determining whether a change in circumstances has occurred so as to warrant a change in custody, a trial judge, as the trier of fact, must be given wide latitude to consider all issues which support such a change, including a change in circumstances because of a child’s age and consequent needs, as well as increased hostility by one parent (and that parent’s spouse) which frustrates cooperation between the parties on visitation issues.””
4 later decisions quote this exact passage“and emphasized that a trial court's finding of whether a change in circumstances has occurred must not be disturbed absent an abuse of discretion. The court stated:”
3 later decisions quote this exact passage
How this case has been treated — in progress
Whether each later court followed, distinguished, criticized, or overruled this decision. The treatment classification (task #35) runs highest-cited cases first and lights up here as it reaches this one.