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Consolidate, but keep them separate by Michael B. Skinner · Friday May 8, 2009 4:49 pm PERMALINK I just wrote a post about this case that I, unfortunately, failed to write in Word first, and when I tried to post it, it got eaten by the internet. So, more briefly: In In the Matter of A.P. and B.J., minors, the Court of Appeals considered the messy situation of a consolidated custody case with an abuse/protective services case. The case is out of Detroit, where the abuse cases are handled in the Lincoln Hall of Justice and the divorce and custody cases are held across town in the Coleman A. Young Municipal Building. Michigan law follows the "one judge, one family" theory, consolidating all cases relating to one family under one judge for all the obvious reasons. In Detroit, there is the additional benefit of keeping the case within the same courthouse. Anyway, in this case, the trial court entered a custody order, but it did so under the juvenile case caption, and it did so without clearly going through the best interest factors statutorily mandated for custody decisions. So the Court of Appeals remanded for further proceedings. The result may ultimately be the same. But the court wants the trial courts to make sure that they keep things straight when they consolidate these matters, because things can get messy quickly, and necessary procedures forgotten even more quickly. | |
