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This opinion is nonprecedential except as provided by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
A24-0515

In re the Marriage of:

Melissa Sydney Reed Lesch, petitioner,
Respondent,

vs.

John Patrick Lesch,
Appellant.

Filed April 7, 2025
Affirmed as modified
Ross, Judge

Ramsey County District Court
File No. 62-FA-20-1890

Sam Khoroosi, Jessica Sampson, Khoroosi Law Office, P.A., St. Louis Park, Minnesota
(for respondent)

Lymari J. Santana, Mack & Santana Law Offices, P.C., Minneapolis, Minnesota (for
appellant)

Considered and decided by Ross, Presiding Judge; Smith, Tracy M., Judge; and
Bratvold, Judge.
NONPRECEDENTIAL OPINION
ROSS, Judge
In this child-custody dispute, father appeals from the district court’s marital-
dissolution judgment granting mother sole legal custody and a greater share of parenting
time and denying his new-trial request. He challenges the district court’s evidentiary
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rulings and its fact findings addressing the parties’ conflict about religious upbringing and
alternative caregivers and contends that the district court’s judgment violates his First
Amendment rights. We hold that the district court’s rulings and reasoning were legally and
factually supported and do not violate father’s constitutional rights, and we see no abuse
of discretion except in the division of holiday time. We therefore modify but affirm the
judgment.
FACTS
John Lesch (father) and Melissa Reed Lesch (mother) wed in 2012 and have two
young daughters. We will refer to the older girl, who was born in 2016, as “Erica” a name
we have randomly chosen in the interest of protecting her privacy. Divorce proceedings
began in December 2020 as mother moved herself and the girls from the parties’ home and
served father with dissolution pleadings.
For the next six months she did not allow father consistent unsupervised parenting
time. The district court then granted father’s motion for temporary equal parenting time.
The parties continued under the temporary order for two years, until the district court
determined custody and parenting time in the presently challenged judgment, which grants
the parties joint physical custody and grants mother sole legal custody and parenting time
9 out of every 14 overnights. The district court’s order followed a five-day trial on social
issues involved in the dissolution, which the district court separated from the financial
issues.
The district court issued its custody-and-parenting-time order after receiving a
custody evaluator’s report and the parties’ competing evidence about the relevant
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circumstances. The parties were employed in political positions with demanding
schedules—father, a lawyer and former state legislator, and mother, a lobbyist. They had
employed a nanny for the girls before the separation and continued to individually employ
nannies for childcare after the separation. But the district court suggested that father relied
on a nanny to care for the girls during his parenting time more than mother relied on a
nanny during her parenting time, including during nonwork hours. The district court also
found that father, who is Catholic, and mother, who is Jewish, had agreed during the
marriage to raise the children Jewish, and testimony indicated that the children attended
Catholic services with father on some major Christian holidays. The custody evaluator’s
report had recommended that the district court grant the parties joint physical custody but
grant mother sole legal custody unless the parties could agree on an alternative-dispute-
resolution process.
The district court credited mother’s accusation that father was teaching Erica
Christian prayers inconsistent with their agreement to raise the children Jewish, and it
discredited father’s testimony that he, rather than his nanny, had provided most of the care
for the girls during his parenting time. The district court allocated mother 9 out of every 14
overnights in parenting time. And it assigned major Jewish holidays to mother every year.
It also assigned the major Christian holidays to father but granted Easter to the parties on
an alternating annual basis. Father unsuccessfully moved the district court to order a new
trial, and he now appeals.

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DECISION
Father challenges the district court’s dissolution judgment on four grounds. He first
argues that the district court based some of its findings on inadmissible hearsay evidence.
He argues second that the district court abused its discretion by granting mother sole legal
custody of the children. He argues third that the district court’s findings related to the
children’s Jewish faith were erroneous and violate his First Amendment rights. And he
argues fourth that the district court erroneously denied his new-trial motion. We address
each argument in turn.
I
Father unconvincingly contests the district court’s reliance on alleged inadmissible
hearsay in its parenting-time and religious-upbringing determinations. The district court’s
findings rested in part on the custody evaluator’s and mother’s relaying of statements that
Erica purportedly made. The district court has broad discretion in making evidentiary
rulings, which we will not reverse absent an abuse of discretion. Doe 136 v. Liebsch, 872
N.W.2d 875, 879 (Minn. 2015). Because the district court did not a buse its discretion by
admitting the statements in the custody evaluator’s report or mother’s statements, we reject
father’s evidentiary argument.
Evaluator’s Report as Hearsay Generally
The hearsay that father challenges chiefly concerns two findings—the finding that
he depended on a nanny to provide childcare during his parenting time while mother
implicitly did not, and the finding that father had begun teaching Erica to recite Christian
prayers. The district court relied on the former to support its decision to afford mother
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substantially more parenting time than it afforded father, and it relied on the latter to
conclude that mother should be granted sole legal custody based on father’s failure to
adhere to the agreement about Jewish upbringing. Father had objected to the district court’s
admitting the evaluator’s report because it contained the hearsay statements. The district
court overruled the objection, treating the evaluation as a “702 expert report.”
We observe that the district court appears to have intended to admit the evidence
under Minnesota Rule of Evidence 703, not 702. Rule 702 deals with expert testimony, and
the parties had been arguing over admissibility instead under rule 703, which deals with
the admissibility of expert data:
(a) The facts or data in the particular case upon which
an expert bases an opinion or inference may be those perceived
by or made known to the expert at or before the hearing. If of
a type reasonably relied upon by experts in the particular field
in forming opinions or inferences upon the subject, the facts or
data need not be admissible in evidence.

(b) Underlying expert data must be independently
admissible in order to be received upon direct examination;
provided that when good cause is shown in civil cases and the
underlying data is particularly trustworthy, the court may admit
the data under this rule for the limited purpose of showing the
basis for the expert’s opinion. Nothing in this rule restricts
admissibility of underlying expert data when inquired into on
cross-examination.
Minn. R. Evid. 703. And the Minnesota statute that specifically governs the treatment of a
custody evaluator’s report authorizes “the court [to] order an investigation and report
concerning custodial arrangements for the child,” permits the evaluator to “consult any
person who may have information about the child and the potential custodial
arrangements,” requires the report to “state the investigator’s recommendation and the
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reason for the recommendation,” and establishes that the evaluator’s “report may be
received in evidence at the [custody] hearing.” Minn. Stat. § 518.167, subds. 1, 2, 4 (2024).
The district court also elaborated that the “purpose of a custody and parenting time
evaluation is of someone who is trained to speak to children, speaks to the child,” reflecting
its consideration of the custody evaluator’s expertise in admitting the report. The rule and
statute together permit ted the district court to receive Erica’s hearsay statements into
evidence through the evaluator’s report over the hearsay objection. The district court
therefore did not abuse its discretion by admitting and relying on the report, including its
hearsay statements.
Evaluator’s Statements about Father’s Use of Nanny
Father’s challenge to the district court’s parenting-time award rests in part on the
district court’s reliance on statements about father’s use of a nanny during his parenting
time. By the time of the trial, father had become romantically involved with the girls’ nanny
and he suggests that the district court failed to take his relationship into proper account.
Although father strongly disputes the district court’s findings, we do not reverse district
court findings unless they are clearly erroneous. Thornton v. Bosquez, 933 N.W.2d 781,
790 (Minn. 2019). The record supports the district court’s findings. It based its findings in
part on the evaluator’s report, which reflected the evaluator’s understanding of the nanny
arrangement partially based on Erica’s statements to the evaluator. We defer to the district
court’s credibility determinations and do not reweigh evidence on appeal. In re Civ.
Commitment of Kenne y, 963 N.W.2d 214, 223 (Minn. 2021). We therefore leav e the
finding intact, particularly because the district court correspondingly also discredited
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father’s contrary testimony. Two other pieces of evidence in the evaluator’s report further
support the district court’s findings. The first is that the evaluator relied on father’s own
statements that the nanny sometimes helps with dinner, bathes the children, brushes their
teeth, and assists with the morning routine. And the second is that the custody evaluator
testified that his concerns about father’s overuse of nanny childcare during his parenting
time would be “valid” even if the nanny had, as the nanny reported, been present for only
25% of father’s parenting time. And although father argues that mother’s testimony about
father’s use of the nanny rested on speculation, the custody evaluator’s report afforded the
district court an adequate basis for its findings. In sum, the record supports the district
court’s findings related to father’s use of the nanny.
We observe in the interest of thoroughness that the district court’s parenting-time
decision did not rest solely on the difference in the amount of time the parties spent
providing childcare during their respective parenting times. The district court found that
mother was more involved in parenting tasks than father before the dissolution, crediting
her testimony and discrediting his. And the district court accepted the evaluator’s
assessment that mother’s relationship with the children is warmer and that they would
benefit from a parenting-time arrangement that favored her rather than father. It
additionally adopted the evaluator’s assessment, referencing the psychological reports
about the parties’ parenting skills, which suggested that father “has challenges that . . . are
risk factors for the children moving forward” but that care with mother posed no
“significant risk factors for [the] children.”

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Mother’s Hearsay Statements of Erica’s Alleged Reciting Christian Prayers
Father finally challenges the district court’s custody award on the ground that the
district court improperly relied on Erica’s hearsay statements to find that father had been
teaching her Christian prayers. This finding led the court to conclude that he had not
supported the children’s spiritual (Jewish) development as agreed to by the parties. Mother
testified that she heard Erica beginning to say Christian prayers after returning from
parenting time with father. Mother’s statements characterizing what she heard Erica pray
are not hearsay because mother was not attempting to convey the substance of the prayers
for the truth of the matter asserted. See Minn. R. Evid. 801(c) (defining hearsay as an out-
of-court statement by someone other than the declarant to prove the truth of the matter
asserted). And for the reasons we have already explained, the district court could receive
the evaluator’s report into evidence despite its containing hearsay. This includes the
statement in the report, based on the parties’ former nanny’s statements, that father was
engaging in prayer with the children. Father urges that his praying with the children had
been consistent with his practice during the marriage, which he implies mother consented
to. But mother also testified directly and without objection that Erica had begun clasping
her hands in a Christian prayer, making the sign of the cross in prayer, and reciting the
Lord’s Prayer. While father challenges mother’s characterization of what she saw and
heard, the district court, and not this court, is exclusively tasked with the fact-finding role.
The district court’s finding that father did not support the children’s spiritual development
as Jewish is sufficiently supported by the record.

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II
Father challenges the district court’s granting mother sole legal custody. We review
custody decisions for an abuse of discretion, limiting our inquiry to determine whether the
district court made findings supported by the evidence and applied the law properly. Pikula
v. Pikula, 374 N.W.2d 705, 710 (Minn. 1985). We review findings of fact for clear error,
giving deference to the district court’s witness-credibility assessments and overturning the
findings only if we are left “with the definite and firm conviction that a mistake has been
made.” Thornton, 933 N.W.2d at 790 (quotation omitted). Father’s arguments do not
compel us to overturn the district court’s decision ordering sole legal custody.
Father maintains that the district court failed to address the statutory presumption
favoring joint legal custody. It is true that the district court here must begin with “a
rebuttable presumption that . . . joint legal custody is in the best interests of the child.”
Minn. Stat. § 518.17, subd. 1(b)(9) (2024). But the presumption is only the starting point,
and it is “merely a procedural device [that] dictates a decision only where there is an entire
lack of competent evidence to the contrary.” Thornton, 933 N.W.2d at 792 (emphasis and
quotation omitted). And notwithstanding father’s opposing assertion, the district court
expressly stated that it was “analyz[ing] the issue of legal custody based on the statutory
presumption.” We turn to consider whether the record supports the district court’s
determination.
The record contains competent evidence that the district court relied on to rebut the
presumption favoring joint legal custody. We do not attempt to list all of it, and the findings
that we have already identified as supporting the district court’s parenting-time schedule
10
also support its legal-custody decision. The district court also found that “both parties feel
victimized by the other and this leaves them with rigidness and intensity toward the other
that has led to their continued inability to reach real consensus when they are deadlocked.”
It found too that father’s mental-health issues are likely to harm the children, relying on a
psychologist’s diagnosis. It found that mother can best support the children’s relationship
with father because of her capacity “to forgive and forget and move on” but that father’s
anger toward mother diminishes his ability to support her relationship with the children.
And it implicitly found that the parties were not amenable to co-parenting, citing “far more
disagreements than agreements” between them and highlighting their reliance on attorneys
to reach even simple agreements. Underscoring this finding is father’s testimony that he
believed mother could not engage in a co- parenting arrangement unless mother was
ordered to work with him. The district court had an ample basis to conclude that the
presumption was rebutted.
Father generally argues that the district court failed to consider evidence that
favored him and improperly made credibility assessments disfavoring him. But we do not
reweigh evidence or reconcile conflicting facts and we generally defer to the district court’s
credibility determinations. See Kenney, 963 N.W.2d at 221–22. Father accurately observes
that the district court did not expressly address all the evidence presented or expressly
identify which best- interests factors weighted in favor of either party, but its analysis of
the evidence is measured, independent, and careful. It addressed some of father’s
contentions about mother’s mental health and alleged substance abuse, found that the
parties had been cooperating on a limited number of parenting issues during the parties’
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temporary equal- parenting-time schedule, discussed mother’s personality traits that
hindered dispute resolution, and acknowledged that father had a loving relationship with
the children. And although father reminds us that we have at times affirmed district court
orders that grant the parties joint legal custody despite conflict between the parents, child-
custody cases present “unique family circumstance[s]” that allow the district court “great
leeway in making” determinations. Thornton, 933 N.W.2d at 790. Given this great leeway,
we have not infrequently affirmed the district court’s custody decisions even if “we might
have reached a different decision.” Rohricht v. O’Hare, 586 N.W.2d 587, 590 (Minn. App.
1998), rev. denied (Minn. Feb. 24, 1999). We are satisfied that the district court acted
within its discretion in assessing the evidence and resolving the disputed evidence.
We are also not persuaded by father’s argument that the district court rejected the
custody evaluator’s legal-custody recommendation without adequately explaining why.
The district court was not bound to follow the evaluator’s report. Pikula, 374 N.W.2d at
712; see Minn. Stat. § 518.167, subd. 2(b)(4) (characterizing the evaluator’s report as a
“recommendation”). And in any event, the evaluator made his recommendation “[t]hat the
parties share Joint Legal Custody” specifically “contingent [on the parties’] engagement of
[a] Consensual Special Magistrate (CSM) through the children’s minority.” He added, “If
the parties do not agree to the appointment of a CSM or someone in a similar role, . . . then
the recommendation is for Sole Legal Custody to [mother].” This recommendation
necessarily implies that the evaluator did not believe that the parties could co-parent
without the intervention of a professional to settle their anticipated impasses. And the
previously discussed district court findings that justify rebutting the presumption favoring
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joint legal custody likewise adequately explain why the court rejected a portion of the
custody evaluator’s recommendation. These justifications are sufficient for our meaningful
appellate review. The district court’s grant of sole legal custody incorporated rather than
ignored the evaluator’s recommendation.
Father finally contends that the district court abused its discretion by relying on
theoretical risk assessments and speculative parenting challenges found in stale expert
reports. The district court found “that Father’s mental health is likely to negatively affect
the children’s safety or developmental needs.” (Emphasis added. ) But a best-interests
assessment is necessarily prospective, requiring the district court to anticipate how current
circumstances, including a parent’s mental-health issues, “affect[] the child’s safety or
developmental needs.” Minn. Stat. § 518.17, subd. 1(a)(5) (2024). The operative statute
directs a district court to consider “all relevant factors,” id ., subd. 1(a), and a parent’s
projected behavior can be relevant to assessing the best interests of his children. And
although father contends that the psychological and custody evaluations were stale by the
time of trial, the evaluations’ completion dates affect their evidentiary weight, which,
again, we will not reweigh. We reiterate that, ultimately , custody determinations are very
discretionary decisions and that there is little if any room for us to question the district
court’s best-interests balancing analysis in an abuse-of-discretion review. In re Welfare of
C.F.N., 923 N.W.2d 325, 334 (Minn. App. 2018), rev. denied (Minn. Mar. 19, 2019). We
see no basis to reverse here.

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III
Father challenges the district court’s decisions about the children’s religious
upbringing on three grounds. He argues first that the district court improperly discredited
his testimony that the parties had never previously agreed to raise the children Jewish and
improperly found that he was not supportive of their religious upbringing. He argues also
that the district court’s penalizing him for not supporting the children’s Jewish upbringing
violates his F irst Amendment rights. And he argues that the district court abused its
discretion by not granting him every Easter holiday with the children.
We are not persuaded by father’s argument contesting the district court’s finding
that the parties had agreed to raise the children Jewish. We review fact findings only for
clear error, Thornton, 933 N.W.2d at 790, and the record supports the finding based on the
district court’s credibility assessment. Mother testified that raising the children Jewish had
been essential to her decision to marry father and that the parties had together participated
in Erica’s Jewish naming ceremony. The custody evaluator reported that father had told a
psychological evaluator that his children were being raised Jewish. Neither child had been
baptized Catholic. Although father complains that the district court ’s amended findings
improperly include extra-record evidence about the significance of the Catholic baptism
within Catholicism, the uncontested trial testimony indicated that baptism is a Catholic
ritual that, unlike the Jewish naming ritual, neither child participated in. Because the district
court received sufficient evidence to find that the parties had agreed to raise the children
Jewish, we hold that the finding was not clearly erroneous.
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Father maintains that the district court’s judgment encroached on his First
Amendment rights of free speech and to freely exercise his Catholic faith. See U.S. Const.
amend. I. We review constitutional challenges de novo. Star Trib. Co. v. Univ. of Minn.
Bd. of Regents, 683 N.W.2d 274, 283 (Minn. 2004). Father cites Wisconsin v. Yoder, which
provides “that only those interests of the highest order and those not otherwise served can
overbalance legitimate claims to the free exercise of religion.” 406 U.S. 205, 215 (1972).
But we have held that the best interests of a child can provide an interest sufficient to
override a parent’s constitutional rights to free speech and to freely exercise his religion.
See Geske v. Marcolina, 642 N.W.2d 62, 70 (Minn. App. 2002); Sina v. Sina, 402 N.W.2d
573, 576 (Minn. App. 1987). And the district court did not penalize father for practicing
his own faith; it instead made a custody decision based in part on father’s supplanting the
children’s Jewish upbringing and implicitly in part on mother’s better position to instruct
them according to the parties’ agreement. Father’s First Amendment argument is
unavailing.
Father convincingly argues, however, that the district court abused its discretion in
distributing parenting time over religious holidays. We analyze parenting-time decisions
for an abuse of discretion. Shearer v. Shearer, 891 N.W.2d 72, 75 (Minn. App. 2017). In
its holiday-parenting-time allocation, the district court granted mother parenting time on
major Jewish holidays and father on most major Catholic holidays. It ordered mother and
father to annually alternate parenting time on Easter. But mother did not clearly argue to
the district court and does not argue on appeal that granting father the Easter holiday would
contradict the parties’ agreement to raise the children Jewish. And mother testified that the
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children attended Easter Mass with father in the past. Mother also told the custody
evaluator that she encouraged father’s taking the girls to Easter Mass. The district court did
not explain why, despite the undisputed testimony about the children’s attendance of Easter
Mass, it withheld Easter from father’s parenting time while distributing the other religious
holidays. We agree with father that the alternating assignment of Easter was, for these
parties, an abuse of discretion. We modify the district court’s judgment to allow father
parenting time every Easter within the time parameters already established by the district
court; this includes the variance the district court included to resolve conflicts between
mother’s Passover parenting time and father’s Easter parenting time whenever those
conflicts arise. Given the timing of this opinion in relation to the 2025 spring- holiday
season, we direct the district court to amend its parenting- time schedule so that this
modification first applies Easter 2026. The district court retains authority to resolve any
unanticipated future conflicts between Passover and Easter parenting time.
IV
Father unconvincingly suggests that the district court improperly denied his new-
trial request. The district court rejected the request after observing, “[Father] has failed to
state any compelling grounds for a new trial . . . . It is clear [he] does not agree with the
Court’s decision, but that disagreement does not rise to the level required under the rule for
a new trial.” Reviewing this denial for an abuse of discretion, Christie v. Est. of Christie,
911 N.W.2d 833, 838 (Minn. 2018), we see no abuse here.
Father presents several grounds to reverse, but he offers only one argument distinct
from those we have already addressed: that newly discovered evidence requires a new trial
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under Minnesota Rule of Civil Procedure 59.01(d). The evidence he identifies is that
mother was discharged from her employment and that she failed to disclose it until a later
proceeding. This evidence, father posits, “could have impacted the court’s decision on her
ability to cooperate” with him. To justify a new trial, the newly discovered evidence cannot
“be merely collateral, impeaching, or cumulative, but rather, must be such as to have a
probable effect upon the result of a new trial.” Frazier v. Burlington N. Santa Fe Corp.,
811 N.W.2d 618, 631 (Minn. 2012). Father fails to persuade us that news of the discharge
would have a probable effect on a new trial. The district court’s decision that mother is
better suited to cooperate did not rest on the parties’ employment but on father’s distrust
of mother, his self-described status as a “contrarian,” and his tendency to be controlling
and inflexible. The district court did not abuse its discretion by refusing to grant a new trial
in light of evidence of mother’s alleged discharge from employment.
Father implies additional theories to reverse, but they are mostly undeveloped and
require no analysis. See Waters v. Fiebelkorn, 13 N.W.2d 461, 464–65 (Minn. 1944) (“[O]n
appeal error is never presumed. . . . [T]he burden of showing error rests upon the one who
relies upon it.”). We emphasize that our affirmance today stands on the significant
discretion afforded to the district court in custody and parenting -time decisions. Our
decision also stands in part on the district court’s findings about father’s level of
cooperation and support of the children’s agreed-upon spiritual upbringing and time spent
parenting— circumstances that are not immutable.
Affirmed as modified.