## Facts

- The mother and father divorced in June 1984. The dissolution decree, entered by agreement, awarded the parents joint custody of their two minor children and set out the father’s periods of temporary custody/visitation.
- The father served in the U.S. Air Force and was stationed overseas at times. The decree allowed the paternal grandparents to exercise the father’s custodial periods if the father could not.
- In 1987, the mother began withholding the father’s custody/visitation. She filed a motion to modify the decree, seeking to terminate the father’s custody and visitation rights based on allegations that the father (and, by extension, visits connected to his family) physically and psychologically abused the children; allegations also arose involving sexual abuse in the paternal setting.
- The father filed his own motion to modify and a motion for contempt, asserting that the mother willfully denied him court-ordered custody/visitation.
- The trial court held hearings in late 1987, then—by agreement—suspended the proceedings to require counseling with a psychiatrist/therapist selected by the parties. The parties stipulated in court that the therapist’s written report would be admissible when the case resumed.
- The therapist terminated counseling after two sessions, concluding the father was not meaningfully working to resolve the problems and that further contact between the father and the children would be dangerous.
- When the hearing resumed in 1988, both sides presented testimony from mental-health professionals who evaluated the parents and children. The mother’s experts described the children as emotionally disturbed and anxious, and testified that their symptoms were consistent with abuse. The mother’s experts generally supported awarding the mother primary custody, but did not uniformly recommend permanently barring supervised visitation.
- The father offered a psychological expert who acknowledged abnormality and significant anxiety in the father-child relationship, but recommended maintaining some relationship rather than ending contact.
- The father requested additional physical examinations of the children in response to abuse allegations. The trial court denied the request, finding the children had already been adequately evaluated and that further examinations would likely harm their mental health.
- The trial court modified the decree by awarding the mother sole custody, terminating the father’s visitation and “any further contact” with the children, ending the paternal grandparents’ ability to exercise visitation through the father’s custodial rights, and awarding the mother $10,065 in attorney’s fees.
- The father appealed.

## Issues

1. Whether substantial evidence supported modifying the joint-custody decree to award the mother sole custody based on changed circumstances and the children’s welfare.
2. Whether substantial evidence supported the trial court’s order terminating all visitation and any further contact between the father and the children.
3. Whether the trial court erred in ending visitation exercised through the paternal grandparents under the decree’s substitute-visitation arrangement.
4. Whether the trial court abused its discretion in awarding the mother $10,065 in attorney’s fees.
5. Whether the father was denied a fair opportunity to present his case due to challenged evidentiary and case-management rulings, including admission of pre-dissolution conduct evidence and denial of further physical examinations.

## Decision

- The court affirmed the modification awarding the mother sole custody, holding the judgment was supported by substantial evidence and served the children’s welfare.
- The court reversed the portion of the judgment terminating all visitation and “any further contact,” holding the complete denial of visitation at the children’s home was not supported by the record, and remanded for entry of a visitation order consistent with the children’s welfare.
- The court rejected the father’s challenge to the termination of visitation exercised through the paternal grandparents under the prior decree’s arrangement.
- The court affirmed the attorney’s fee award as within the trial court’s discretion on this record.
- The court found no reversible error in the challenged evidentiary and trial-management rulings, including admission of evidence of pre-dissolution conduct and denial of additional physical examinations.

## Legal Principles

- A custody decree may be modified only upon a substantial and continuing change in circumstances and only if the modification is necessary to serve the child’s best interests; the child’s welfare controls.
- Appellate review of custody and visitation decisions is limited: the appellate court does not reweigh evidence and will affirm if the judgment is supported by substantial evidence and reflects no abuse of discretion.
- When the original custody arrangement was entered by agreement and not litigated, evidence of pre-dissolution conduct not previously evaluated by the court may be considered in a later modification proceeding if it bears on current conditions affecting the children.
- Visitation may be restricted to protect children, but a complete denial of visitation is an extreme remedy that requires strong evidentiary support; if the record supports limits short of total severance, the trial court must fashion a narrower order.
- Trial courts have broad discretion over psychological or physical examinations of children and over evidentiary rulings; denying additional examinations is permissible when the children have already been sufficiently evaluated and further testing risks harm.
- Attorney’s fees in domestic relations matters are committed to the trial court’s discretion and are upheld absent a clear abuse of that discretion.

## Conclusion

The Missouri Court of Appeals affirmed the transfer from joint custody to sole custody in the mother and affirmed the attorney’s fee award and key evidentiary rulings, including consideration of pre-dissolution conduct and refusal to order further physical examinations. However, it reversed the trial court’s complete termination of the father’s visitation and contact as unsupported by the evidence and remanded for a visitation order tailored to the children’s welfare.


K.J.B. v. C.M.B., 779 S.W.2d 36 (1989)