Stitham v. Henderson’s Empirical Analysis
2001
Citation profile
17 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 19 later decisions — most recently July 2025
17 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 Rideout v. Riendeau · E.N.O. v. L.M.M. · 160 Mich. App. 601 - Atkinson v. Atkinson · Smith v. Cole · In Re Shane T.
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 19 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“[b]ecause of his prior legal relationship to the child and his current role as a de facto parent, the District Court has jurisdiction to decide whether it is in the best interests of [the child] for Henderson to have a continuing role in [the child's] life and what that role should be.”
2 later decisions quote this exact passagee.g. Young v. Young · Cew v. Dew“A de facto parent is an individual other than a legal parent or a parent by estoppel who, for a significant period of time not less than two years, (i) lived with the child and, (ii)for reasons primarily other than financial compensation, and with the agreement of a legal parent to form a parent-child relationship, or as a result of a complete failure or inability of any legal parent to perform caretaking functions, (A) regularly performed a majority of the caretaking functions for the child, or (B) regularly performed a share of care-taking functions at least as great as that of the parent with whom the child primarily lived.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority“We have said that res judicata bars relitigation if: (1) the same parties or their privies are involved in both actions; (2) a valid final judgment was entered in the prior action; and (3) the matters presented for decision in the second action were, or might have been, litigated in the first action.”
1 later decision quote this exact passagee.g. Godsoe v. Godsoe
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.