Dad asks court to let girlfriend sleep over (law bans cohabitation)

[China]

Dad asks court to let girlfriend sleep over

Changes possible for law, child custody

December 22, 2005

BY BILL LAITNER

FREE PRESS STAFF WRITER

Michigan's 74-year-old law banning cohabitation -- a remnant of a bygone era on the books in only a handful of states today -- is being challenged by a divorced Ferndale man barred from sleeping under the same roof with his girlfriend when his young daughters visit.

Christian Muller, 35, said his girlfriend, Michelle Moon, has to sleep in his van parked in his driveway or spend the night with friends when his daughters, ages 5 and 7, come to visit on alternate weekends.

"Somehow we've been able to keep this from them," said Muller, who divorced in 2003 after seven years of marriage. "The kids wake up in the morning, and I get them their breakfast, and after that I go out and wake up Michelle, and she comes in and nobody says anything. I don't know how much longer we can keep this up."

Lawyers for the American Civil Liberties Union said Wednesday they had appealed on Muller's behalf, asking the Michigan Supreme Court to hear the case and ultimately overturn a lower-court ruling.

If the court rules in favor of Muller, the decision likely would overturn the 1931 law that forbids cohabitation in Michigan -- one of only seven states that have kept such a law on the books, according to the ACLU.

A decision upholding the law, however, could affect the child-custody arrangements of thousands of divorced couples, opening the door to other requests on ex-spouses' sleeping and dating arrangements.

At least 6% of Michigan's 2.6 million children age 18 and under -- perhaps 156,000 or more -- live in households where the adults are unmarried, according to Kids Count Databook 2005.

Muller said that some weekends, his girlfriend even drives to Cincinnati to stay with her parents, taking her own 8-year-old daughter with her.

Moon's inside-outside sleeping pattern has been going on for 18 months.

Muller is an account manager with a trade consulting firm and leader of the local rock band the Blue Sunrays.

The lawyer for Muller's ex-wife, Nicolette Muller of Grand Blanc, said her client has had enough of the cohabitation tussle and was not carrying the dispute any farther.

"I explained to her that the Supreme Court could rule her way" even if she takes no additional action, Farmington Hills lawyer Elizabeth Silverman said.

The case dates to an order by Oakland County Circuit Judge Daniel Patrick O'Brien, who ruled last year in favor of Nicolette Muller after she requested that her ex-husband's girlfriend sleep elsewhere when her daughters visit.

At a hearing in March 2004, O'Brien said, "I will order a mutual no-unrelated adult overnights. ... I'm not making any findings of fact one way or the other."

But in a subsequent appeal by Christian Muller -- who handled the case himself because he said he had no funds to pay a lawyer -- the Michigan Court of Appeals ruled in October that the applicable law was the statute banning cohabitation.

If the state Supreme Court decides to hear the case, its outcome likely will hinge on whether privacy rights -- said to be implicit in the U.S. Constitution -- also provide the right for adults to live together, married or not, said Michael Steinberg, the lawyer with the American Civil Liberties Union of Michigan who is handling the case.

"There are other Michigan Court of Appeals opinions that contradict what the Court of Appeals did in this case. So the law in this state says that the courts can't rely on the cohabitation statute to deny partners visitation rights," he said.

Society's view of cohabitation has shifted radically in the last three decades, said Thomas W. Blume, a Bloomfield Hills licensed marriage and family therapist.

Cohabitation offends some religious groups, but it is now seen by many in society as a normal way of life and often as a pathway to marriage, said Blume, an associate professor at Oakland University.

In court testimony, Nicolette Muller said that before her children were born, she had cohabited with Christian Muller.

Her request for no cohabitation while her children visit, however, is not unusual in legal disputes over parenting time, family-practice lawyers said.

Kathleen Dilger, a family practice attorney for 22 years, said such requests used to be standard in all counties but aren't anymore.

"In Macomb and Lapeer, it's still pretty much the policy of the bench -- no overnights, especially against women. They tell you, 'You want to lose your kid?'

"But in Oakland, the judges generally will say, 'I don't want to impose my moral views on you' even though they may not approve" of overnight stays by a partner, said Dilger, whose office is in Rochester.

[Larry]

a) As far as I'm concerned, the reason this is happening is because MOM's ticked that Dad has another woman, and she's using her kids (and a law that hasn't been enforced for 100 years) as a tool for a fight.

OTOH, I'd be willing to bet that the reason Dad hasn't just married the New Girl, is because the New Girl is collecting child support from a former other, and they want to keep the money coming in.

[SkinsD]

This isn't that out of date, my mother is a family law attorney and she always tell her clients to never let their gf/bf (or paramour as the court refers to them) to sleep over cause they will almost definately lose custody if the Judge hears about it.

[Johnny Punani2]

a) As far as I'm concerned, the reason this is happening is because MOM's ticked that Dad has another woman, and she's using her kids (and a law that hasn't been enforced for 100 years) as a tool for a fight.

OTOH, I'd be willing to bet that the reason Dad hasn't just married the New Girl, is because the New Girl is collecting child support from a former other, and they want to keep the money coming in.

que banjo....