In re the Marriage of: Michaela Dojcinovic Bachmayer, NKA Michaela Dojcinovic, petitioner, Respondent,

This opinion is nonprecedential except as provided by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
A21-1346

In re the Marriage of: Michaela Dojcinovic Bachmayer,
NKA Michaela Dojcinovic, petitioner,
Respondent,

vs.

Kyle Dalke Bachmayer,
Appellant.

Filed May 16, 2022
Affirmed
Slieter, Judge

Hennepin County District Court
File No. 27-FA-18-4040

Susan A. Cragg, Lynn Klicker Uthe, Lynn Klicker Uthe, Ltd., Minnetonka, Minnesota (for
respondent)

Kyle Bachmayer, Minneapolis, Minnesota (pro se appellant)

Considered and decided by Segal, Chief Judge; Bratvold, Judge; and Slieter, Judge.
NONPRECEDENTIAL OPINION
SLIETER, Judge
In this parenting dispute, appellant argues that the district court (1) should have
found respondent to be in constructive civil contempt of court; (2) abused its discretion by
denying, without an evidentiary hearing, his motion to modify custody; (3) should not have
further restricted his parenti ng time without an evidentiary he aring; and (4) should have
granted his motion to amend findings of fa ct. The district court properly dismissed
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appellant’s contempt motion and properly denied his custody-modification motion without
an evidentiary hearing. And, because the district court’s further restriction of appellant’s
parenting time without an evidentiary he aring was harmless and appellant failed to
establish a basis for amended findings, we affirm.
FACTS
Appellant Kyle Dalke Bachmayer (fathe r) and respondent Mi chaela Dojcinovic
Bachmayer (mother) married in 2016 and toge ther had a child in 2017. Mother began
marriage dissolution proceedings in May 2018. In October of 2019, the district court issued
its findings of fact, order for judgment, a nd judgment and decree (J&D) dissolving the
parties’ marriage. Mother was awarded sole legal and sole physical custody of the child,
and father was awarded restricted parenting time of nine hours per week.
The district court restricted father’s parenting time because it found that additional
parenting time would “endanger [t he child’s] emotional health and impair his emotional
development” and that “maximizing time be tween [the child] and [father] could be
detrimental, while minimizing time could be beneficial.” We affirmed the district court’s
restriction of father’s parenting time. Bachmayer v. Bachmayer, No. A19-1929, 2020 WL
4434557, at *1 (Minn. App. Aug. 3, 2020).
Both parties filed postjudgment motions re lated to parenting time and custody. In
June 2020, the district court granted father compensatory parenting time but did not specify
the amount or a schedule.
In December 2020, mother moved the district court to allow her to relocate with the
child to her native country of Slovakia and to require that father’s parenting time be
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supervised. Father filed a responsive motio n seeking to modify custody by granting him
sole legal and sole physical custody with equal parenting time, and an order holding mother
in contempt for, in part, her fa ilure to facilitate his compensatory parenting time. After a
January 2021 hearing to consider the parties’ motions, the district court limited father’s in-
person parenting time to supervised contact only and reduced his parenting time to one-
half hour per week. In a March 2021 writte n order, the district c ourt denied mother’s
relocation motion, ordered that father’s weekly parenting time must be supervised and
denied all of father’s motions. In Apr il 2021, father brough t a motion for amended
findings, which the district court denied. Father appeals.
DECISION
I. The district court acted within its dis cretion by denying father’s contempt
motion.

District courts may enforce parenting time orders by holding a party in contempt of
court. Minn. Stat. § 518.175, subd. 6(h) (2020). Contempt is an extreme remedy that is to
be exercised with caution. Hampton v. Hampton, 229 N.W.2d 139, 140-41 (Minn. 1975).
A district court has broad discretion to hold a party in civil contempt when the party “has
acted contumaciously, in bad faith, and out of disrespect for the judicial process.”
Newstrand v. Arend , 869 N.W.2d 681, 691 (Minn. App. 2015) (quotation omitted), rev.
denied (Minn. Dec. 15, 2015). The purpose of a civil-contempt order is to end a party’s
ongoing failure to comply with a court order, not to punish a party for past failures. See
Hopp v. Hopp, 156 N.W.2d 212, 216 (Minn. 1968). We review the district court’s decision
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to hold a party in civil contempt for an abuse of discretion. See Sehlstrom v. Sehlstrom ,
925 N.W.2d 233, 239 (Minn. 2019).
The basis for father’s contempt motion is that mother allegedly denied him the
compensatory parenting time awarded to him by the district court in its June 2, 2020 order.
The district court denied the contempt motion because, it concluded, father failed to allege
a provision of the district court order with which mother failed to comply. See Hopp, 156
N.W.2d at 216 (“In exercising civil contempt powers in divorce cases, the only objective
is to secure compliance with an order presum ed to be reasonable.”). This conclusion is
supported by the record.
The district court’s June 2 order required the parties to “cooperate in arranging for
compensatory parenting time for Father” to recoup parenting time lost due to the COVID-
19 pandemic.1 However, the order specified neither an amount of compensatory parenting
time for father nor when the compensatory parenting time was to occur. In an affidavit,
mother stated that sh e “ensured that [father] could exer cise all of his compensatory
parenting time (66 hours) that he was unable to exercise due to COVID-19 in a timely
manner.” Because father failed to allege that mother was in noncompliance with the district
court’s order, we discern no abuse of discretion in the district court’s denial of father’s
contempt motion. Id.

1 The district had ordered parenting time exchanges be supervised by a third-party
organization, which closed temporarily during the COVID-19 pandemic.
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II. The district court properly denied father’s motion to modify custody.

We review three discrete determinations when reviewing an order denying, without
an evidentiary hearing, a motion to modify custody based on child endangerment. Amarreh
v. Amarreh, 918 N.W.2d 228, 230 (Minn. App. 2018), rev. denied (Minn. Oct. 24, 2018).
“First, we review de novo whether the district court properly treated the allegations in the
moving party’s affidavits as true, disregarde d the contrary allegatio ns in the nonmoving
party’s affidavits, and considered only th e explanatory allegations in the nonmoving
party’s affidavits.” Id. at 230-31 (quoting Boland v. Murtha, 800 N.W.2d 179, 185 (Minn.
App. 2011)). Second, we determ ine whether the district court abused its discretion when
determining whether the moving party made a prima facie case for modification or
restriction. Id. at 231. Third, “we review de novo whether the district court properly
determined the need for an evidentiary hearing.” Id.
To make an initial showing of child endangerment, father, as the moving party, must
allege a prima facie case to obtain an evidentiary hearing. Christensen v. Healey , 913
N.W.2d 437, 440 (Minn. 2018). Generally, a prima facie case is allegations which, if true,
would allow the district court to grant the movant the relief sought. Amarreh, 918 N.W.2d
at 231; see Tousignant v. St. Louis County, 615 N.W.2d 53, 59 (Minn. 2000) (stating that
a prima facie case is “one that prevails in the absence of evidence invalidating it” (quotation
omitted)). Thus, to make a prima facie case to modify custody, father must allege that
(1) the circumstances of the child or custodial parent have changed since the prior custody
order, (2) modifying custody would serve the child’s best interest s, (3) the child is
endangered either physically or emotionally by the present arrangement, and (4) the
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benefits of modification outweigh the detriments to the child. Christensen, 913 N.W.2d at
440; see also Minn. Stat. § 518.18(d)(iv) (2020).
First, as to our de novo review of whether the district court properly considered
father’s affidavits as true, it did. The district court did accept them as true and concluded
that the allegations in father’s affidavits related to compensatory parenting time. The few
remaining allegations do not allege that th e child is endangered either physically or
emotionally.
Second, as to the determination that father did not make an adequate prima facie
case, the district court act ed within its discretion . Father must allege that the current
custody arrangement endangers the child’s phys ical or emotional health or impairs the
child’s emotional development. Minn. Stat. § 518.18(d)(iv). Endangerment is “unusually
imprecise,” and the statute demands “a showing of a significant degree of danger.” Sharp
v. Bilbro , 614 N.W.2d 260, 263 (Minn. A pp. 2000) (quotation omitted), rev. denied
(Sept. 26, 2000). Generally, whether endangerment exists is “based on the particular facts
of each case,” including any allegations of physical or emotional abuse. Lilleboe v.
Lilleboe, 453 N.W.2d 721, 724 (Minn. App. 1990).
As noted above, father’s affidavits do not allege that the child is endangered either
physically or emotionally. See also Szarzynski v. Szarzynski, 732 N.W.2d 285, 292 (Minn.
App. 2007) (citing Smith v. Smith, 508 N.W.2d 222, 227-28 (Minn. App. 1993) (affirming
the denial of custody modification without an evidentiary hearing when the moving party’s
allegations were “too vague to support a finding of endangerment”); Axford v. Axford, 402
N.W.2d 143, 144-45 (Minn. Ap p. 1987) (stating that an evidentiary hearing was not
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necessary where the affidavit supporting the motion to change custody “was devoid of
allegations supported by any specific, credible evidence”)). Thus, the record supports the
district court’s endangerment determination.
In sum, the district court did not err when it denied, without an evidentiary hearing,
father’s motion to modify custody. Amarreh, 918 N.W.2d at 231.
III. Any error by modifying father’s sup ervised parenting time without an
evidentiary hearing was harmless.

Father next argues that the district court erred as a matter of law by denying, without
an evidentiary hearing, his motion to modify parenting time.
The district court has broad discretion to decide parenting-time questions. Olson v.
Olson, 534 N.W.2d 547, 550 (Minn. 1995). A district court abuses its discretion by making
findings of fact that are unsupported by the record, by misapplying the law, or by resolving
the discretionary question in a manner that is contrary to logic and the facts in the record.
Bender v. Bernhard, 971 N.W.2d 257, 262 (Minn. 2022).
This case presents an unusual posture be cause the issue on appeal is whether the
district court erred by further restricting father’s parenti ng time without an evidentiary
hearing.2 However, even if we assume the di strict court erred by failing to hold an

2 The parties argue that the district court wa s required to hold an evidentiary hearing to
modify parenting time, citing caselaw distinguishing between significant and insignificant
modifications. See Matson v. Matson, 638 N.W.2d 462, 468 (Minn. App. 2002) (reversing,
in part, because the district court “significantly” reduced mother’s parenting time without
an evidentiary hearing). We note that the supreme court recently held, when determining
whether the district court must make findings to support significant changes to parenting
time, that the “common-law distinction be tween ‘significant’ modifications and
‘insignificant changes or clarifications’ . . . is unsupported by the text of the parenting-time
statutes.” Hansen v. Todnem, 908 N.W.2d 592, 597 (Minn. 2018).
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evidentiary hearing, as father contends, that error is harmless. To obtain relief, an appellant
must show that the district court erred, that the appellant was prejudiced by that error, and
that the prejudice to the appealing party was s ubstantial. Minn. R. Civ. P. 61 (requiring
harmless error to be ignored); Goldman v. Greenwood, 748 N.W.2d 279, 285 (Minn. 2008)
(applying rule 61 in a family law appeal); see also Katz v. Katz , 408 N.W.2d 835, 839
(Minn. 1987) (noting that appellate courts will not reverse a district court if it reached an
affirmable result for the wrong reasons). Fath er fails to show how the absence of an
evidentiary hearing substantially prejudiced him. See Hecker v. Hecker, 543 N.W.2d 678,
681 (Minn. App. 1996) (affirming the district court because, even assuming error, that error
would be “nonprejudical”), aff’d, 568 N.W.2d 705 (Minn. 1997).
Father submitted approximately 600 pages comprised of affidavits and additional
documents. Mother also subm itted more than 200 pages comprised of affidavits and
additional documents, all of which the district court considered. Additionally, the district
court was intimately familiar with the claims ma de by the parties as it presided over this
case through all proceedings from the J&D to the most recent order which we now review.
Father, therefore, was not prejudiced by the la ck of an evidentiary hearing, and any error
in failing to conduct an evidentiary hearing was harmless.
IV. The district court acted within its disc retion by denying father’s motion to
amend findings.

We review a district court’s denial of a motion to amend findings for an abuse of
discretion. Zander v. Zander, 720 N.W.2d 360, 364 (Minn. App. 2006), rev. denied (Minn.
Nov. 14, 2006). Pursuant to Minn. R. Civ. P. 52.02, a party may move the district court to
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amend its findings or make additional findings, and amend the judgment accordingly. To
properly move to amend findings, the movant must “both identify the alleged defect in the
challenged findings and explain why the challenged findings are defective.” Lewis v.
Lewis, 572 N.W.2d, 313, 315 (Minn. App. 1997), rev. denied (Minn. Feb. 19, 1998).3 On
appeal, we defer to the district cour t’s balancing of conflicting evidence. See Nielsen v.
City of Saint Paul, 88 N.W.2d 853, 864 (Minn. 1958) (“To justify the reversal of a refusal
to make amended findings, it is not enough to show that there was evidence to justify the
proposed amended findings had they been made.”); Haefele v. Haefele, 621 N.W.2d 758,
763 (Minn. App. 2001) (stating that appellate courts defer to the district court’s credibility
determinations), rev. denied (Minn. Feb. 21 2001).
Father’s motion does not id entify which findings he wants amended or which
evidence supports his prop osed changes. Instead, father’s motion broadly states that he
wants the district court to remove “every su ggestion” that he endangered the child or
behaved inappropriately, to apologize to him for “cha racter defamation[],” and find that
mother endangered the child and “has chronically and unreasonably failed to comply with
court-ordered parenting time.” Father bear s the burden both to prove that the initial
findings are erroneous and “explain why the proposed findings are appropriate,” based on

3 Madson v. Minn. Mining & Mfg. Co., 612 N.W.2d 168 (Minn. 2000), overruled Lewis in
part, but Lewis remains good law for the necessary components of a motion for amended
findings. State ex rel. Fort Snelling State Park Ass’n v. Minneapolis Park & Recreation
Bd., 673 N.W.2d 169, 178 n.1 (Minn. App. 2003), rev. denied (Minn. Mar. 16, 2004).
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the record evidence. Lewis, 572 N.W.2d at 315. Because he fails to meet that burden, the
district court acted within its discretion when it denied his motion to amend findings.
Affirmed.