In re the Marriage of:

This opinion is nonprecedential except as provided by
Minn. R. Civ. App. P. 136.01, subd. 1(c).

STATE OF MINNESOTA
IN COURT OF APPEALS
A20-1342

In re the Marriage of:

Wynter Rose Isakson, f/k/a Wynter Rose Anderson, petitioner,
Appellant,

vs.

Derek Morris Anderson,
Respondent.

Filed August 23, 2021
Affirmed
Cochran, Judge

Becker County District Court
File No. 03-FA-15-2163

Nicole J. Tabbut, Pemberton Law, P.L.L.P., Detroit Lakes, Minnesota (for appellant)

Jessica L. Moen, Aaland Law Office, LTD., Fargo, North Dakota (for respondent)

Considered and decided by Segal, Pr esiding Chief Judge; Ross, Judge; and
Cochran, Judge.
NONPRECEDENTIAL OPINION
COCHRAN, Judge
Appellant-mother challenges the district court’s order denying, without an
evidentiary hearing, her motion to modify custody. We affirm.

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FACTS
Appellant-mother Wynter Rose Isaks on and respondent-father Derek Morris
Anderson married in September 2011 and late r had two children. In October 2015, the
district court entered a stipulated judgment dissolving the parties’ marriage. At that time,
the parties’ youngest child was one year old. The dissolution judgment awarded the parties
joint legal and joint physical custody of the children. The judgment further awarded father
parenting time every other week end until the younger child reac hed age three. At that
point, the judgment provided the parties woul d begin a week on/week off parenting-time
schedule.
However, when the youngest ch ild turned three, the par ties did not switch to the
week on/week off parenting-time schedule. Instead, father cared for the children on
weekends and mother cared for the children during the week and alternating Sundays until
the events giving rise to this case.
In March 2020, Governor Walz issued Emergency Executive Order 20-20 (EEO
20-20), which generally directed Minnesotan s to stay at home due to the COVID-19
pandemic subject to limited exce ptions. In April 20 20, mother informed father that she
would keep the children at her home until EEO 20-20 was lifted. Mother offered to make
up for the lost parenting time with video conferencing while EEO 20-20 was in place and
with compensatory parenting time once the order was lifted.
Later in April 2020, father moved the district court to hold mother in contempt
because mother had “completely denied [fath er] his court ordered parenting time” and
because mother “refused” to switch to the week on/week off parenting-time schedule set

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by the dissolution judgment. Father also aske d the district court to order the parties to
follow the week on/week off schedule.
In a responsive filing, mother opposed father’s motion. Mother also filed a
countermotion asking the court to (1) suspend father’s parenting time until EEO 20-20 was
lifted and (2) either modify the parenti ng-time schedule in the existing dissolution
judgment or appoint a custody evaluator to determine a different parenting-time schedule.
At this point in the proceeding, mother did not seek modification of custody. Mother filed
two affidavits in support of her position—an initial affidavit and a reply affidavit.
In his responsive memorandum, father argu ed that the district court should deny
mother’s countermotion. Father argued, in relevant part, th at mother’s motion to modify
parenting time was actually a de facto moti on to modify custody, and thus the more
rigorous standard governing modification of custody under Minn. Stat. § 518.18(d)
(2020)—and not the best-interests standard in Minn. Stat. § 518.175, subd. 5(b) (2020),
governing parenting time—applied to mother’s motion. Father also filed two affidavits—
an initial affidavit and a reply affidavit.
In July 2020, the district court held a hearing on father’s motion and mother’s
countermotion.1 Father requested that the district court order the partie s to comply with
the week on/week off parenting-time schedule included in the dissolution order. Father
also reiterated his argument that mother’s motion to modify parenting time was a de facto

1 The district court held an initial hearing in J une 2020 that had to be rescheduled to July
due to technical difficulties. At the initial he aring, the district court denied father’s
contempt motion with respect to mother retaining the children in response to EEO 20-20.

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motion to modify custody, and he contended that mother had not met her burden to allege
a prima facie case for modification. In respon se, mother argued for the first time that her
affidavits established a prima facie case for a change in custody under section 518.18(d)
based on either integration of the children in to mother’s family or endangerment of the
children. She asserted that father had implicitly consented to the children being integrated
into her home by waiting two-and-a-half years to enforce the week on/week off schedule.
She also contended that her affidavits esta blished a prima facie case of endangerment
because father refused to transport the ch ildren to school. Mo ther argued that an
evidentiary hearing was warranted for the dist rict court to “consider whether these kids
were integrated into [her] hom e.” Father replied by denying that he agreed to forgo the
week on/week off parenting-time schedule incl uded in the dissolution order. He also
maintained that he “is fully prepared and able” to assume the week on/week off schedule.
The district court took the matter under advisement.
In an August 2020 order, the district court denied bo th father’s motion to hold
mother in contempt and moth er’s countermotion, which it characterized as a motion to
modify custody. The district court ruled that mother had “not made a prima facie showing
of endangerment sufficient to grant [her] reque st to restrict parenting time,” but it did not
explicitly rule on mother’s integration argume nt. Finally, the district court ordered the
parties to begin the week on/week off pa renting schedule included in the dissolution
judgment beginning in the first week of September 2020. Mother now appeals the district
court’s denial of her countermotion without an evidentiary hearing.

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DECISION
Mother does not challenge the district c ourt’s treatment of her countermotion as a
motion to modify custody. Instead, she argues that the district court erred by denying her
custody-modification motion without holding an evidentiary hearing to determine whether
the children were integrated into he r home within the meaning of Minn.
Stat. § 518.18(d)(iii).
With exceptions not applicab le here, modification of a joint-custody order is
governed by the standards set forth in Minn. Stat. § 518.18(d). Minn. Stat. § 518.18(e)
(2020). Section 518.18(d), in tu rn, provides that modification of a prior custody order is
permitted only in specific circumstances. One such circumstance is integration of the child
or children into the family of the moving party with the consent of the other party. Minn.
Stat. § 518.18(d)(iii). The party seeking modi fication of a custody order must establish a
prima facie case for modification to be entitled to an evidentia ry hearing on the matter.
Christensen v. Healy, 913 N.W.2d 437, 440 (Minn. 2018). To establish a prima facie case
for modification based on integration, the moving party must allege that (1) the
circumstances of the child or the parties have changed, (2) modifica tion is necessary to
serve the child’s best interests, and (3) “the child has been integrated into the family of the
petitioner with the consent of the ot her party.” Minn. Stat. § 518.18; see
Downey v. Zwigart, 378 N.W.2d 639, 642-43 (Min n. App. 1985) (applying section
518.18(d) to a custody-modification motion ba sed on integration). If the moving party
does not allege a prima facie case, the distri ct court is required to deny the custody-

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modification motion without an evidentiary hearing. Nice-Petersen v. Nice-Petersen, 310
N.W.2d 471, 472 (Minn. 1981).
In reviewing a district court’s denial of a custody-modification motion without an
evidentiary hearing, we review three discrete determinations. Amarreh v. Amarreh ,
918 N.W.2d 228, 230 (Minn. App. 2018). First, we review de novo the district court’s
treatment of the parties’ affidavits. Id. at 230-31. Second, we apply an abuse of discretion
standard to the district court’s determination of whether the moving party alleged a prima
facie case for custody modification. Id. at 231. And third, we review de novo the district
court’s determination of whether an evidentiary hearing was necessary. Id. With this
background in mind, we turn to mother’s arguments on appeal.
Mother argues that the district court erred in two respects by denying her motion to
modify custody without an evidentiary hearing. First, she argues that the “district court
erred in its analysis of the parties’ affidavits.” Second, she argues that the district court’s
conclusion that she “failed to establish a prima facie case of integration was unsupported
by the facts in the record and was an abuse of the district court’s discretion.” We address
each argument in turn.
I. The district court properly considered the parties’ affidavits.
When reviewing the affidavits of a pa rty moving for custody modification, the
district court must “accept the f acts in the moving party’s affidavits as true, disregard the
contrary allegations in the nonmoving party’s affidavits, and consider the allegations in the
nonmoving party’s affidavits only to the extent they explain or contextualize the allegations

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contained in the moving party’s affidavits.” Amarreh, 918 N.W.2d at 230 (quotation
omitted).
Mother contends that the district court e rred “to the extent it considered [father’s]
affidavits for anything but context.” In maki ng this argument, she notes that the district
court’s order denying her motion to modify custody states, in relevant part, “Assuming the
allegations contained in the affidavits ar e true . . . .” Mother argues that, if “the district
court was referring to all of the affidavits from each party,” the district court erred.
To the extent that mother’s argument asks this court to assume that the district court
erred, her argument fails as a matter of law. See Loth v. Loth, 35 N.W.2d 542, 546 (Minn.
1949) (“[O]n appeal error is never presumed. It must be made to appear affirmatively
before there can be reversal. Not only that, but the burden of showing error rests upon the
one who relies upon it.” (quotation omitted)). Moreover, mother cites no allegation from
father’s affidavits that the district court accep ted as true or relied on in its order denying
her motion to modify custody. Thus, the most logical reading of the district court’s order
is that the “affidavits” to which the district court referred were mother’s two affidavits, not
both parties’ affidavits. Accordingly, mother has not shown that the district court erred
with respect to its treatment of the parties’ affidavits.
II. The district court did not abuse its di scretion by determining that mother had
not alleged a prima facie case of integration.
We review a district court’s determination of whether a party alleged a prima facie
case for custody modification for an abuse of discretion. Amarreh, 918 N.W.2d at 231. A
district court abuses its discretion if, am ong other things, it “misapplies the law[] or

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resolves the matter in a manner that is cont rary to logic and the facts on record.”
Madden v. Madden, 923 N.W.2d 688, 696 (Minn. App. 2019).
Mother argues that the district court abus ed its discretion by determining that she
“failed to establish a prima fa cie case of integration.” She argues that she established a
prima facie case of integration of the childre n into her home with fa ther’s consent based
on her allegation that father consented to co ntinue the weekend parenting-time schedule
instead of switching to the w eek on/week off schedule as orig inally contemplated by the
dissolution order. Although the district court did not explicitly rule on mother’s integration
argument, its silence, combined with its refusal to hold an evidentiary hearing, show that
the district court implicitly c oncluded that mother had not a lleged a prima facie case of
integration. See Palladium Holdings, LLC v. Zuni Mortg. Loan Tr., 775 N.W.2d 168, 177-
78 (Minn. App. 2009) (“Appellate courts cannot assume a district court erred by failing to
address a motion, and silence on a motion is ther efore treated as an im plicit denial of the
motion.”), review denied (Minn. Jan. 27, 2010).
To establish a prima facie case of integration in support of her custody-modification
motion, mother had to allege sufficient facts to show, among other factors, that the children
were integrated into her home with father’s consent. Minn. Stat. § 518.18(d)(iii).
Generally, integration has been applied in cases where a child or children have been
residing with the parent who did not have physical custody under the terms of the
dissolution judgment. See, e.g. , Pfeiffer v. Pfeiffer , 364 N.W.2d 866, 868-69 (Minn.
App. 1985) (concluding children were actually integrated into noncustodial parent’s home
with consent of custodial parent because parties lived together post-dissolution for

9
approximately one year before custodial parent moved away and noncustodial parent spent
more time caring for children); Downey, 378 N.W.2d at 642 (con cluding parent who had
actual but not physical or legal custody of the child alleged prima facie case of integration
where child lived with non-custodial parent for his entire life except for seven months).
Here, by contrast to Downey and Pfeiffer, mother and father were granted joint
physical (and legal) custody under the terms of the agreed-upon dissolution judgment. And
the judgment provided th at the children would be living part-time with both families—
mother’s family and father’s family. The allegations that mother now contends support a
change in custody relate primarily to paren ting time, which is not surprising given that
mother’s motion was originally framed as a motion to modify parenting time. In her
affidavit, mother alleged that when the youngest child turned three years old and the parties
were to switch to the week on/week off parenting-time schedule, father “was unwilling to
pay for daycare for the girls during his week on and was unable to transport the girls to and
from school.” Thus, mother alleged, the parties agreed to continue “the current parenting
time schedule where [father] has the girls every other weekend from Friday to Sunday and
Friday to Saturday on the other weekends.” (Emphasis added.) Mother further alleged that
retaining the current parenting-time schedule was in the girls’ best interests because it gave
“them a ‘home base’ during the school year ” and that “an abrupt change to the parenting
time schedule would be confusing to the girls.” (Emphasis added.) In her reply affidavit,
mother alleged that she had “been the main careg iver for the last five years” and that she
had “been the one to arrange their schooli ng and extracurricular activities.” Mother
concluded her reply affidavit by stating: “I believe the parenting time schedule that is

10
currently in practice is in the be st interest of the girls. They are used to the schedule and
routine and I believe it would be detrimental to the girls to abrup tly change that.”
(Emphasis added.)
On this record, we discern no abuse of di scretion by the district court’s conclusion
that mother failed to establish a prima facie case of integration needed to support a change
in custody. First, as noted above, the allega tions that mother relies on for her prima facie
case relate mainly to the division of parenting time. Mother did not specifically allege that
the children had been fully integrated into her home, and instead she only alleged that the
parties failed to switch to the week on/week off parenting-time schedule as required by the
dissolution judgment. Because the original dissolution judgme nt contemplated that the
parties would split parenting time in the c ourse of sharing phys ical custody, these
allegations do not support a change in physica l custody based on in tegration within the
meaning of Minn. Stat. § 518.18(d)(iii).
Furthermore, mother cites no case law su pporting the proposition that a change in
the pattern of caretaking can constitute integration of the children into the home of the
parent with whom the children spend more time where the parents have joint physical and
joint legal custody under an existing dissolution judgment. Nor are we aware of any such
precedent. Accordingly, mother has not shown that the district court abused its discretion
by concluding that she failed to allege a prima facie case of integration within the meaning
of Minn. Stat. § 518.18(d)(iii). And, because the district court did not abuse its discretion
in that regard, we conclude that the distri ct court properly denied mother’s motion to
modify custody on the basis of integration without conducting an evidentiary hearing. See

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Nice-Petersen, 310 N.W.2d at 472 (requiring district court to deny custody-modification
motion not supported by prima facie case).
Affirmed.