Judge Melinda Johnson has been on the Ventura County bench for 17 years and has presided over family law court for several years. The Times asked Johnson for her views on so-called move-away cases, in which a custodial parent asks the court for permission to move to another city or state with the children, even if the other parent objects.
Q: In 1996, the California Supreme Court ruled that a custodial parent has a right to move to another city or state, even if the other parent objects, unless there is evidence that such a move would harm the child. Why did the court rule this way and how has the so-called Burgess decision impacted the way you deal with relocation requests in your court?
A: [State Supreme Court] Justice Stanley Mosk [who wrote the Burgess opinion] is an old-fashioned liberal. And he has some old-fashioned ideas about children and child-rearing. He has said for a long time, through opinions and ruling, that, generally, custody means custody. When a couple splits up, one parent raises the kids. And that parent should be able to do generally what she wants to do, as long as it's not a bad thing.
Why they let him write this opinion, I don't know. It could be his long-term interest in the issue. The other thing I don't understand, and I don't think anybody does, is why on earth they [the state Supreme Court] chose the Burgess case. Burgess is not helpful for trial court judges, because it made law in an unusual move-away case instead of the typical case that comes before judges. Mrs. Burgess moved 45 minutes away. People commute that far all the time. But most of the move-away cases that we deal with are for distances much farther [and thus involve more complications].
The appellate cases that have come down since have revolved around the percentage of time that each parent spends with the kid. The kinds of things that we face as judges are about schools, friends, households. Mom, let's say, wants to move to Minnesota and the child is 11. [The child] has gone to the same schools all her life, has had all the same friends. The question arises on a daily basis, what is the status quo? You are disrupting the status quo seriously when you move them away from everything they have known all their life. With a child who is 2, it is a different thing.
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Q: How has the decision impacted children?
