In MacFarlane v. MacFarlane, (Oh. Ct. App., Cuyahoga County, June 22, 2006), an Ohio appellate court rejected a wife’s attempt to move jurisdiction over the divorce and custody case filed by her husband to the Diocesan Tribunal of the Cleveland Catholic Diocese. Among the grounds for denying her request was that child custody disputes are not subject to arbitration and that she had waived any right to arbitration when she filed her own complaint for legal separation with the court.
The court also rejected the wife’s claim that her free exercise rights had been infringed when the court gave custody of the couple’s children to their father. The mother claims that this prevents her from home schooling the children and therefore is unable to raise them in the Catholic faith. The court found that the trial court had not been motivated by a preference for a particular religious belief, or by any antagonism to the Catholic faith, but instead acted to protect the best interests of the children. Moreover, nothing prevents the mother from attending religious services with the children or enforcing religious beliefs with them in the home.
