FAMILY COURT SHOULD NOT HAVE LET A PARTY DETERMINE THE AMOUNT OF SUPERVISED CONTACT MOTHER IS TO BE ALLOWED, AND FAMILY COURT SHOULD NOT HAVE CONDITIONED FURTHER PETITIONS BY MOTHER ON PERMISSION FROM THE COURT (FOURTH DEPT).

The Fourth Department determined Family Court should not have delegated its authority to order the amount of supervised contact with the children mother is to be allowed and should not have conditioned further petitions by mother on permission from the court:

… [T]he court erred in granting her only so much supervised contact as was “deemed appropriate” by petitioners. The court is “required to determine the issue of visitation in accord with the best interests of the children and fashion a schedule that permits a noncustodial parent to have frequent and regular access” … . “In so doing, the court may not delegate its authority to make such decisions to a party” … , which the court did here by delegating to petitioners its authority to set a supervised visitation schedule. We therefore … remit the matter to Family Court to determine the supervised visitation schedule.

… [T]he court erred in ordering that any petition filed by the mother to modify or enforce the custody orders must have a judge’s permission to be scheduled. “Public policy mandates free access to the courts” … , and it is error to restrict such access without a finding that the restricted party “engaged in meritless, frivolous, or vexatious litigation, or . . . otherwise abused the judicial process” … . Here, it is undisputed that the mother had not commenced any frivolous proceedings. In the absence of such a finding, it was error for the court to restrict the mother’s access to the court … . Matter of Lakeya P. v Ajja M., 2019 NY Slip Op 00761, Fourth Dept 2-1-19