By Michael Bielawski

The Vermont Supreme Court has cleared a father of allegations of child abuse regarding his attempt to move his children to California during the COVID-19 shutdowns in 2022.

The Supreme Court ruling this month noted that “Father [Rodney Centeno] argues that the family division erred in finding that there was evidence of abuse….. We agree with father that the finding of abuse was clearly erroneous and therefore strike that finding.”

The children will remain primarily with the mother [Melanie Centeno].

Melanie Centeno is a Vermont native, Rodney Centeno is from California. The couple divorced in 2022 after spending 16 years together, including about eight years in California and then about six in Vermont. Things got challenging for the couple during the economy’s shutdown during COVID-19, when the father was furloughed from his position at a local fitness center in Vermont.

He eventually returned to work but decided there might be better offers back in California, where the couple had lived from 2008 to 2016. So they moved there again in early 2021 with their two children but by mid-summer, neither parent found the work they wanted. Soon they moved back to Vermont, and the couple moved into separate homes.

The father then decided to return to California again in 2022. The mother, who was now looking to purchase a home in the Chittenden County area, went with their son to visit him that summer. Once the father announced he was thinking about staying put, a dispute began between the couple over who the children would stay with.

The court determined that the father may have acted too fast and without the mother’s support to get the family to California. The document states, “However, the court found that he stopped depositing his paychecks into the party’s joint account, signed a lease with the entire family listed as occupants in mid-July, enrolled daughter in junior high school, and informed the children when they arrived that they would be going to school in California that fall. In mid-July, he sent an email to his California relatives informing them of his actions.”

Initially, the lower court found the father’s actions toward relocating the family to California without the mother’s support may have amounted to child abuse. It stated, “Although with a significant measure of caution in using the term, the court finds that in Father’s attempted coup a year ago, there is evidence of abuse within the statutory meaning in 15 V.S.A. [§] 1101, and particularly as defined in 33 V.S.A. [§] 4912. The court finds that Father’s plan, however well-intentioned, risked and actually caused harm to the psychological growth, development and welfare of the children in this case.”

The new decision removed any formal assertion of abuse on account of the father’s actions to relocate them to California. It also finds that the family is doing relatively better since their conflict began.

It states, “It found that both parents were able and disposed to provide the children with love and guidance and to meet their material and developmental needs. They were generally able to communicate and cooperate with each other to make decisions regarding the children, with the notable exception of the July 2022 incident.”

The writer is an author for the Vermont Daily Chronicle