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Temporary order stops widow's move to N.C. with her son

Sunday, May 18, 2003

By Barbara White Stack, Post-Gazette Staff Writer

Bonnie Miller was packing up her house in Export last month, hoping to leave behind the melancholy of widowhood and to launch a new life for herself and her son in North Carolina.

	Bonnie Miller with Kevin -- A clash over the right of parents to raise children as they see fit. (Steve Mellon, Post-Gazette)

She'd sold the home she had shared with her late husband, Jeff Miller, and bought one in North Wilkesboro, close to the birthplace of her new fiance. She'd gotten a job there. The moving van was scheduled. The knickknacks were in a U-Haul.

Then she discovered Jeff Miller's parents, Ronald and Rose Miller of Plum, were trying to stop her. They'd asked a judge to give them partial custody of her son and to prohibit Bonnie Miller from moving more than 25 miles away from the house she'd already sold in Export.

They said in their petition to the court that they'd lost their son and couldn't bear the thought of losing their grandson, too.

On April 29, Westmoreland County Common Pleas Judge Rita Donovan Hathaway issued a temporary order forcing Bonnie Miller to turn over her 3-year-old son to his paternal grandparents for three days every other week and to stay in a 25-mile-range of her old home.

The Millers' conflict with their daughter-in-law pits deeply held values: The right of grandchildren to the support and comfort of extended family and the right of parents to raise children as they see fit.

Because the legislature has awarded grandparents some power in these situations, the battle occasionally is fought on the floors of courtrooms. Grandparents ask a judge to order parents to give them visits with their grandkids and parents ask the judge to allow them to schedule the children's time to suit the nuclear family's needs.

That's about time, though, not residency. The Millers have taken the dispute to a new level by asking a judge to prevent Bonnie Miller, 32, from exercising her otherwise unquestioned right to live and raise her son where she chooses.

The immediate impact on Bonnie Miller is financial. She has spent thousands of dollars on attorney's fees and a furnished apartment where she and her son, Kevin, can live until a Westmoreland County judge issues a final order.

The long-term impact of a decision that would prevent parents from moving is that grandparents would gain enormous power. They could stop parents from relocating to attend college, secure jobs or take promotions.

Competing interests

Bonnie Jackson met Jeff Miller at Nick's Fat City in July 1996, and they were engaged by December. They married April 17, 1997, with the blessing of his parents and hers.

He was a phone system installation expert with his own company. She was a dental hygienist. They bought a house in Export. Their son, Kevin Jeffrey Miller was born August 25, 1999.

Rose Miller drove Bonnie and Kevin to the baby's first pediatrician appointment when he was 7 days old, and after Bonnie returned to work part-time, Rose Miller cared for Kevin three days a week.

The relationship between the Millers and their daughter-in-law was cordial, something that even Judge Hathaway, who was one of Bonnie Miller's dental clients, acknowledged in a hearing.

"My dealings with Bonnie, she had nothing but wonderful things to say about Mr. and Mrs. Miller . . .I remember when [Bonnie] lost her adoptive mother that it was like Mrs. Miller was like her mother," the judge said.

Jeff Miller fell ill in February 2002, when Kevin was 2. Bonnie took him to the hospital Feb. 12, and he was dead of leukemia a month later.

Heartbroken, Bonnie enrolled herself and Kevin in grief therapy. She says she urged Rose Miller to join them, but she declined to take the classes.

Six months later, in August, Bonnie met Jimmy Hincher, a 26-year-old physical therapy student from Wilkesboro, N.C., while chatting on the Internet. About that same time, she began to allow Kevin to spend one night a week at Rose and Ronald Miller's house with a similarly-aged cousin. And in October, when she went to North Carolina to meet Hincher, Kevin spent five days with his grandparents.

Bonnie returned to North Carolina with Kevin a week before Christmas, but she came back in time to spend the holiday with the Millers. "I want him to know his grandparents," she explains.

Hincher came to Pennsylvania in December to be with Bonnie, and not long afterward, they decided to move to North Carolina. Bonnie put her house up for sale and they searched for one to buy in North Wilksboro.

It was not until after closing was scheduled for both homes, that Bonnie learned that the Millers were trying to prevent her from leaving.

State law allows parents like the Millers, whose child has died, and even their parents -- Kevin Miller's great grandparents -- to seek partial custody or visitation. Partial custody is when someone is permitted to remove a child from the home of the primary custodian. Visitation is when a person is permitted only to visit within the home of the primary custodian.

The law says the visits or custody must be in the best interests of the child and must not interfere with the parent-child relationship -- in this case, the one between Bonnie and Kevin.

In addition, Pennsylvania allows grandparents who have cared for a grandchild for 12 months in their home to seek partial custody if a parent removes the child. And grandparents who have cared for a grandchild that long, and who can show that the parent abused or neglected the child, may seek full custody. In effect, they may to try to take the child away from the parent.

It's not clear what the Millers are asking for because their petition says they are seeking "shared/legal/partial custody" and says "the best interest and permanent welfare of the child will be served" by granting the grandparents custody because they "can successfully care for the child and provide him with a stable, healthy environment" and they "can and will provide an environment of protection and guidance best suited for the physical, mental and moral welfare of the child."

In addition, in one petition, they make accusations against Bonnie that suggest they are trying to show she is abusive or neglectful, in which case, they could get full custody. They say, "The mother is estranged from her birth family, has a history of migrant behavior, and is currently residing with an unknown paramour, and may be mentally unstable."

Bonnie found these particularly painful. She said she had no idea why the Millers would accuse her of being mentally ill. She said she has visited North Carolina only five times. And the unknown paramour, in fact, is Hincher, whom she has introduced to the Millers.

The reference to her birth family is simply cruel, said her lawyer, Faren L. Ferri of Murrysville. Bonnie's mother abandoned her when she was 9, and Bonnie hasn't heard from her since.

She was adopted by Kenneth and Norma Jackson of Claysville, Washington County, when she was 12. She continues to have a close relationship with her adoptive family, but could not move there while she awaited the judge's final order because the house is outside the 25-mile radius in which Hathaway ordered her to live.

What's next?

Ferri said she was shocked by the judge's action, even if it only temporarily prevents Bonnie from moving. "This really seems egregious," she said.

Two family law experts agreed with her.

In a divorce case, relocation of a custodial parent may become an issue, but in that situation, both parties, mother and father, have equal status in relationship to the child, said Carol McCarthy of the Downtown law firm of McCarthy McDonald Schulberg & Joy. To allow grandparents to prohibit relocation, she said, "gives them equivalent status to the mother. The law does not provide for that."

Joanne Ross Wilder, of Wilder & Mahood, Downtown and author of "Pennsylvania Family Law Practice and Procedure," agreed. She said that "parents have a constitutionally protected right to raise their children and that right generally trumps the rights of other people."

If that were not the case, she said, "The courts could decide to take children away from parents and place them with someone who in the court's opinion could provide better for the child or who would set a better example for the child. We just don't do that. We are supposed to respect the autonomy of the parent-child relationship."

And, she noted, Bonnie could be permitted to move and the grandparents also given partial custody -- "They could visit in North Carolina."

The Millers and their attorney, Carol L. Hanna, of Bethel Park, declined comment.

Hathaway said that she'd urged Bonnie and the Millers to try to settle the matter themselves without her intervention. "I always tell people, 'I am a stranger. Do you want me to decide the custody order for the child?'"

When mediation failed, however, she said she offered a hearing in four days, but neither Hanna nor Ferri accepted.

Ferri said she needed time to prepare her case. There was too much too lose. If the judge issued a final order proscribing Bonnie from moving, an appeal could take longer than a year, during which time, Bonnie would be stuck in Pennsylvania with an empty house in North Carolina.

The next hearing on the case is June 4.