Lee Charles Bloomquist, petitioner, Respondent,

This opinion will be unpublished and
may not be cited except as provided by
Minn. Stat. § 480A.08, subd. 3 (2016).

STATE OF MINNESOTA
IN COURT OF APPEALS
A17-0789

Lee Charles Bloomquist, petitioner,
Respondent,

vs.

Jennifer Lynn Kimlinger,
Appellant.

Filed April 16, 2018
Affirmed
Bjorkman, Judge

Anoka County District Court
File No. 02-FA-12-2448

Amy L. Senn, Amy L. Senn, P.A., Bayport, Minnesota (for respondent)

Douglas G. Sauter, Lindsay K. Fischbach, Barna, Guzy & Steffen, Ltd., Minneapolis,
Minnesota (for appellant)

Considered and decided by Rodenberg, Presiding Judge; Bjorkman, Judge; and
Smith, John, Judge.

 Retired judge of the Minnesota Court of Appeals, serving by appointment pursuant to
Minn. Const. art. VI, § 10.

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U N P U B L I S H E D O P I N I O N
BJORKMAN, Judge
In this child -custody dispute, appellant -mother challenges district court orders
requiring the child to change schools and awarding sole legal custody to respondent-father.
We affirm.
FACTS
Appellant Jennifer Lynn Kimlinger and respondent Lee Charles Bloomquist are the
parents of J.L.K., born in March 2006. Father was adjudicated the child’s father in 2011.
During the pendency of that matter, mother accused father of improper contact with the
child and filed multiple police reports and civil actions, none of which were substantiated.
A psychological assessment of mother revealed that she tends to be rigid and judgmental,
and suggested that she would have difficulty sharing parenting responsibilities. Father was
also assessed and determined to function normally. The district court granted the parties
joint legal and physical custody of the child. To help the parties work together, the district
court ordered a parenting coach for mother, a parenting consultant for both parties, and
scheduling assistance.
Father moved to modify custody in October 2014, seeking a school change for the
child and requesting sole legal custody. Mother objected, insisting that the child continue
attending a private, church -affiliated school where mother had strong ties and led the
parent-teacher association. At the evidentiary hearing, father testified that the parties
continually disagreed about school issues, such as homework, school activities , and
uniforms, with mother often attempting to exclude father’s involvement. Father described

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one instance when mother attempted to make contact with him and the child during a
church service, “causing a scene” that required clergy and law -enforcement intervention.
The district court also received evidence regarding the parenting consultant’s inability to
reduce mother’s excessive influence at school, father’s eventual decision to stay away from
the school to a void contact with mother, and the child’s “withdrawn” state after
encountering mother at school during father’s on -duty parenting days. Based on this
evidence, the district court found that it was not in the child’s best interests to remain at the
school. The May 4, 2015 order directs the child to attend public school the following year
and states that father established a prima facie case for custody modification, warranting
an evidentiary hearing.
The three-day evidentiary hearing occurred in J anuary 2016. In a comprehensive
43-page order, the district court granted father sole legal custody of the child. In summary,
the court determined:
Overwhelming evidence was presented to the Court
showcasing the parties’ intense conflict and their cont inual
battle over the education, medical and religious decisions for
[the child]. The present joint legal custody arrangement
creates an environment of instability so that [the child] is
caught in a tug-of-war between her parents that endangers her
emotional development.

Mother appeals.

D E C I S I O N

A district court may modify a prior custody order based on endangerment if it finds
that (1) the circumstances of the child or the parties have changed, (2) modification is
necessary to serve t he best interests of the child, (3) the child’ s present environment

4
“endangers the child’ s physical or emotio nal health or impairs the child’ s emotional
development,” and (4) the harm likely to be caused by the modification is outweighed by
its advantages to the child. Minn. Stat. § 518.18(d)(iv) (2016). The party seeking a custody
modification bears the burden of establishing these factors, and the district court must make
specific findings addressing each. Crowley v. Meyer , 897 N.W.2d 288, 293 -94 (Minn.
2017). Our review of cust ody determinations “is limited to whether the district court
abused its discretion by making findings unsupported by the evidence or by improperly
applying the law.” Hansen v. Todnem , ___ N.W.2d ___, ___, 2018 WL 1321370, at *2
(Minn. Mar. 14, 2018) (quotation omitted).
Mother challenges both the modification of legal custody and the order requiring
the child to change schools. She particularly asserts that the district court abused its
discretion by ordering the school change without considering the child’s best interests. We
address each custody decision in turn.
I. Modification of Legal Custody
In deciding to modify legal custody, the district court made detailed findings in four
areas: p arental conflicts regarding the child’s schooling, medical care, and religi ous
upbringing, and the parents’ overall inability to co -parent. The record is replete with
references to mother’s unrelenting efforts to exclude or limit father’s access to the child in
these areas. On two occasions, both of which occurred in public (a church and a doctor’s
office) and in the presence of the child, law enforcement or security had to be called to
quell the parties’ confrontations. On each occasion, mother initiated the disput e in
violation of either a court order or a parenting consultant’s directive. The district court

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found that all four areas of conflict endangered J.L.K.’s emotional health. The findings are
supported by a voluminous record.
Mother asserts that the district court abused its discretion in modifying legal custody
because (1) there was not a demonstrated change of circumstances between the initial 2012
custody order and the 2016 custody-modification order, (2) the evidence of endangerment
to the child was insufficient, (3) any harm to the child was not outweighed by the advantage
of a custody change, and (4) a change of custody is not in the child’s best interests. We
disagree.
First, a comparison of the 2012 custody order with the 2016 custody -modification
order demonstrates that the district court was initially cautiously optimistic that the parties
could co-parent. But their conflicts escalated and became entrenched, making them unable
to do so and causing endangerment to the child . In the custody -modification order, the
district court stated that at the time of the 2012 order “the Court hoped, rather than knew,
that the parties would be able to develop a better co-parenting relationship.” In that order,
the court expressed “grave concerns” about wheth er mother would relinquish her control
and allow father to co-parent; unfortunately, by 2016, these concerns were vindicated. Cf.
Hecker v. Hecker, 568 N.W.2d 705, 709-10 & n.3 (Minn. 1997) (stating, in the context of
a motion to modify spousal maintenance, that the frustration of an as sumption underlying
the existing award can constitute the change in circumstances necessary to allow
modification of that award).
Second, as to evidence of endangerment to the child, the record shows that mother
took extreme measures to exclude father from t he child’s life. And her will to do so was

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unaffected by assistance or directives from outside sources —including court orders and
professional recommendations —that she should co-parent with father. 1 “The
endangerment standard requires a significant degre e of danger, which includes danger
purely to emotional and psychological development.” Tarlan v. Sorensen , 702 N.W.2d
915, 922 (Minn. App. 2005) (quotation omitted).
We reject mother’s suggestion that endangerment occurs only after a c hild has
suffered actual harm; exposure to serious potential harm also constitutes endangerment.
See Black’s Law Dictionary 644 (10th ed. 2014) (defining “endangerment” as “[t]he act or
an instance of putting someone or something in danger; exposure to peri l or harm”); see
also Tarlan, 702 N.W.2d at 9 22 (including “a significant degree of danger” to a child’s
emotional well-being as endangerment (quotation omitted)). In a similar factual scenario,
this court, relying on a social worker’s statement of concern “about what has ha ppened to
the child’s emotional health” due to the denial of visitation, found endangerment based on
the possibility that the deprivation “significantly increase[d]” the risk of “problems” to the
child “later on.” Meier v. Connelly, 378 N.W.2d 812, 816 (M inn. App. 1985); see Grein
v. Grein, 364 N.W.2d 383, 385-86 (Minn. 1985) (affirming custody modification when one
parent persistently interfered with other parent’s on -duty time and when parent’s
“continued suspicious and accusatory nature . . . may have an adverse effect on the child

1 In discussing the effect that a change of custody would have on mother, the district court
commented that it was not sure “what restrictions, short of terminating [father’s] legal and
physical custodial rights, would quell [mother’s] anxiety or fear about her lack of control.”

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and his relationship with [the other parent]”). We affirm the district court’s determination
that this record sufficiently demonstrates endangerment to the child.
Third, when balancing harms occasioned by custody modification, the district court
found that granting father sole legal custody would diminish the parents’ conflict over the
child’s religious education, promote the child’s treatment by medical professionals, and
maintain parental neutrality with regard to the child’s school. The district court also
envisioned a “change in dynamic” in betwe en the parents that would “be positive” for the
child. The evidence and findings support the district court’s determination, and mother’s
specific challenges to the evidentiary support for these findings are not borne out by the
record.2
Finally, mother challenges the district court’s best-interests determination, focusing
on the court’s failure to consider how the change in school would affect the child. Mother
points to an isolated statement in the district court’s memorandum of law attached to its
school-change order that the court did “not believe that [the child] will in any way be
negatively affected by [the school] change” as proof that the court did not consider the
child’s best interests. We are not persuaded. Viewed in context, the statement was not
determinative and merely constituted a n oblique reference to the child’s best interests.
Further, the statement was included in the school -change order and was not among the
numerous findings of fact supporting the district court’s custody-modification decision. In

2 For instance, mother challenges the district court’s finding that father would be more
likely to allow the child to attend religious services with mother. This finding is supported
by evidence that father has been willing to take the child to attend services at mother’s
church even on his on-duty parenting days.

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its school-change order, the district court determined that the parents were in conflict over
which school the child should attend, mother’s volunteering increased conflict between the
parents, father’s exclusion from participation at the child’s school created an imbalance in
the parents’ input in the child’s education, the school location was the site of “tense
quarrels” in front of the child, mother volunteered at the school even after the district court
directed her not to do so, the school sided with mother in interpreting directives about
whether mother could volunteer at school, the child was “withdrawn after spending time
with her mother at school on [father’s] on-duty days,” mother refused to use any “collateral
resources” for the child that were unconnected to the school, father avoided school to avoid
conflicts with mother, and the “lack of equal involvement by both parents with [the child’s]
school is not in [the child’s] best interests.”
In the custody-modification order, the district court’s findings reviewed the history
of the school conflict in greater detail and found that the child’s attendance at the private
school remained a continuous source of “exceedingly high conflict” between the parents
and that the child was “placed . . . in the center” of those conflicts. The district court noted
examples of mother’s lack of support for the school change, including that she only
reluctantly ensured that the child was available for the “new student meet and greet” after
intervention from a parenting consultant and the child’s therapist. The district court’s
determinations with regard to the school conflict and its endangering effect on the child are
fully supported by the record.
Finally, the overall record supports the district court’s assessment that modification
of legal custody is in the child’s best interests. While mother acknowledges the district

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court analyzed the proper best -interests factors, she argues that the court ignored the fact
that both parents “are functio nal and loving parents.” Mother’s characterization of the
parties may be true. But, to the child’s detriment, the parties have not demonstrated that
they can serve as functional and loving parents together. We note the district court has
been involved w ith this family since 20 11. And we defer to the court’s assessments
regarding the credibility of the parties. Based on our careful review, we conclude that the
record and findings support the district court’s best -interests determination. See Tarlan,
702 N.W.2d at 924 (“If a child’s emotional well-being is endangered, her best interests are
clearly not being met.”).
II. School Change
A parent who has “legal custody” of a child has “the right to determine the child’s
upbringing, including education, health care, and religious training.” Minn. Stat.
§ 518.003, subd. 3(a) (2016) (emphasis added). Because we affirm the district court’s grant
of sole legal custody to father, the school-change issue is moot. See Enright v. Lehmann,
735 N.W.2d 326, 330 (Minn. 2007) (“An issue is moot if a court is unable to grant effectual
relief.”); Mattson v. Mattson, 903 N.W.2d 233, 24 2 (Minn. App. 2017) (“When an event
occurs which makes a decision on the merits unnecessary, an appeal is moot.”) , review
denied (Minn. Dec. 27, 2018). Accordingly, we decline to separately address whether the
district court abused its discretion in issuing the interim order requiring the child to change
schools.
Affirmed.