## Facts

- Charles D. McDermott is the child’s natural father and worked in the merchant marine, requiring months-long periods at sea.
- The child’s maternal grandparents, Hugh and Marjorie Dougherty, sought third-party custody in the Circuit Court for Harford County.
- The circuit court found the child’s mother unfit, but found the father not unfit.
- Despite finding the father fit, the circuit court treated the father’s extended work-related absences (and related stability concerns) as “exceptional circumstances” and awarded the grandparents sole legal and physical custody.
- The intermediate appellate court affirmed the custody award.
- The Court of Appeals of Maryland granted review to consider whether the circumstances overcame the constitutional presumption favoring a fit parent.

## Issues

1. Whether a fit parent’s employment requiring extended absences at sea constitutes “exceptional” or “extraordinary” circumstances sufficient to award custody to third-party grandparents.
2. Whether a court may apply a free-standing “best interests of the child” analysis to displace a fit parent in a private third-party custody dispute absent parental unfitness or extraordinary circumstances detrimental to the child.

## Decision

- The Court of Appeals of Maryland reversed the judgment awarding custody to the maternal grandparents.
- The court held that the father’s merchant marine employment and resulting absences did not constitute exceptional circumstances sufficient to overcome the presumption favoring custody with a fit parent.
- The court reaffirmed that, in private third-party custody disputes, a court may not reach a comparative best-interests inquiry unless unfitness or extraordinary circumstances detrimental to the child are first established.

## Legal Principles

- A fit parent has a constitutionally protected liberty interest in the care, custody, and control of the parent’s child; third parties bear a heavy burden to overcome the presumption favoring the parent.
- In a private custody contest between a fit parent and a third party, “best interests of the child” does not control unless the third party first proves parental unfitness or extraordinary circumstances that are significantly detrimental to the child.
- Ordinary considerations of stability or generalized welfare concerns cannot substitute for a threshold finding of unfitness or detrimental extraordinary circumstances.
- Lawful employment choices, even when they entail lengthy absences, do not by themselves establish extraordinary circumstances sufficient to remove custody from a fit parent.

## Conclusion

Because the father was found fit and the asserted justification for third-party custody rested primarily on his work-related absences, the grandparents failed to establish exceptional or extraordinary circumstances detrimental to the child; the custody award to the grandparents was reversed.


McDermott v. Dougherty, 385 Md. 320, 869 A.2d 751 (Md. 2005)