The Second Department, reversing Family Court, determined the judge was biased against mother and excessively interfered in the custody hearing:
The record of the proceedings supports the mother’s contention that the Family Court was biased against her, depriving her of a fair and impartial hearing. Although the mother’s claim of bias is not preserved for appellate review … . Here, the record demonstrates that the court predetermined the outcome of the case during the hearing and took an adversarial stance against the mother by, among other things, interjecting itself into the proceedings by cross-examining the mother on matters irrelevant to a determination of custody, including referring to the mother as “emotionally excessive” and inquiring as to how many online dating web sites the mother utilized at the time she met the father and as to when the mother and the father became intimate. The court also asked the mother, “so you were looking to start a relationship with someone?” and then commented, “And so you were married at the time?” Although the father was also married to someone when he began his relationship with the mother, no such questions or comments were directed to him by the court. The court’s inquiry of the mother exceeded 30 pages of transcript over the course of the two-day hearing. Although the court also questioned the father, the first inquiry related to setting up a parental access schedule for the father while the hearing was pending and the second set of inquiries appeared designed to elicit testimony from the father that was unfavorable to the mother, including one instance where the court intimated that the mother was practicing “extortion” against the father in order to gain an advantage in the proceedings … . Matter of Siegell v Iqbal, 2020 NY Slip Op 02084, Second Dept 3-25-20