Rule 3.204.Proceedings Affecting Children

MCR 3.204 is the rule that stops a family from being split across courtrooms. When a circuit court is already handling child support, custody, or parenting time for these parents, or holds continuing jurisdiction from an earlier action, this rule tells a party where the next dispute goes and lets the court pull the resulting orders together. Everything in subrule (A) yields if the court orders otherwise for good cause.

Motion or new complaint

Subrule (A)(1) draws the line by relief. A new demand about the support, custody, or parenting time of the same child must be filed as a motion in the earlier action if the relief sought would have been available in the original cause of action. If that relief was not available there, it must be filed as a new complaint.

A different child of the same parents

Subrule (A)(2) sends a new action about a different child of the same parents to the same county as the prior action, provided the circuit court for that county has jurisdiction over the new action, and directs that the new case be assigned to the same judge who had the previous one.

Subrule (B) handles the harder version of that question, where more than one circuit court action is pending or more than one circuit court has continuing jurisdiction. A complaint for the support, custody, or parenting time of a different child of the same parents goes to whichever circuit court has jurisdiction to decide the new action. If more than one of the previously involved courts qualifies, or the action could be filed in more than one county within a circuit, the tiebreakers run in order:

• the county of a prior action involving the parents' separate maintenance, divorce, or annulment;
• failing that, the county of the circuit court that issued a judgment affecting the majority of the parents' children in common;
• failing that, the county of the circuit court that issued the most recent judgment affecting a child of the same parents.

One order instead of many

Subrule (A)(3) states the ambition plainly: whenever possible, all actions involving custody, parenting time, and support of children of the same parents are administered together. Unless the court finds good cause not to, a final order in a new action involving a new child must consolidate the custody, parenting time, and support provisions for that child and for any children named in previous actions over which the court has jurisdiction. The order has to reference the other cases and say that it supersedes their custody, parenting time, and support provisions.

The same subrule permits the court to modify those preexisting provisions in the new action, but only where the modification is supported by evidence presented in the new case and both parents have had an opportunity to be heard about the proposed changes.

Subrule (C) offers an administrative route to the same tidiness. The court may enter an order consolidating the custody, parenting time, and support provisions of multiple orders when the cases involve different children of the same parents and all other parties are the same, or when more than one action involves the same child and parents. That order also must reference the other cases and state that it supersedes their provisions.

A voice for the child

Subrule (D) lets the court, on a party's motion or on its own initiative and for good cause shown, appoint a guardian ad litem to represent a child in a custody dispute, and assess the costs and reasonable fees against the parties in full or in part.