An Arizona father repeatedly travelled to Michigan to see his child under a custody order, but the mother obtained a protection order accusing him of harassment; an October 23 appeals court ordered that protection order cancelled

A father who repeatedly travelled from Arizona to Michigan to see his child under a court-ordered custody agreement has won an appeal to clear his name. The decision came after a court cancelled a protection order that the child’s mother had obtained against him. In a ruling issued on October 23, 2026, the Michigan Court of Appeals overturned a lower court decision that had kept an emergency personal protection order in place against the father. The appeals court directed the Wayne Circuit Court to issue a formal order ending the protection order. The ruling ends a long-running legal dispute over court authority and the enforcement of custody rights between the parents. Court documents published by Justia Law identify the parents as TB and LRW.

Arizona granted custody enforcement

The dispute began after the couple separated and the mother moved with their minor child from Arizona to Michigan. The father continued to live in Arizona and turned to the courts to establish and protect his parental rights. In October 2023, the Michigan Court of Appeals ruled that Arizona had legal authority over the child’s custody case under the Uniform Child-Custody Jurisdiction and Enforcement Act. Following that decision, an Arizona court granted the parents joint legal custody in December 2024. In its custody ruling, the Arizona court found that the mother had deliberately kept the father away from the child by preventing scheduled visits. To address the problem, the court ordered the father to collect the child directly from the mother’s home in Michigan for his first period of parenting time. The father repeatedly travelled to Michigan after giving advance notice that he intended to collect his child. However, the mother refused to carry out the scheduled exchanges. The father could not find the child in the state, so he began legal proceedings to enforce the custody order in Michigan’s Oakland Circuit Court in January 2025.

Protection orders sought during litigation

Soon after the father filed his enforcement case, the mother asked the Wayne Circuit Court for an emergency personal protection order without first notifying him. She accused him of stalking and harassment. The court granted the order on January 31, 2025. The father later stated in court filings that he had never been properly served with the order. He said he only learned that it existed several months later, when he received a notification from the Michigan State Police. During the same period, the mother also applied for similar protection orders in Arizona. Judges in Arizona dismissed her requests after hearings, finding that she had not provided enough evidence to support her claims. One Arizona judicial officer noted that the evidence strongly suggested the mother was using protection orders to get around court-ordered parenting time and prevent the custody order from being enforced. Despite these decisions, the Wayne Circuit Court rejected the father’s request to end the Michigan protection order at a hearing in July 2025. The trial judge relied heavily on the mother’s testimony and declined to review documents about the ongoing custody decisions made by courts in Arizona and Michigan.

Appeals panel finds trial court erred

After reviewing the case, the Michigan Court of Appeals found that the trial court had made serious errors when issuing and keeping the emergency protection order in place. The appeals court explained that an emergency protection order requires specific evidence showing that immediate and lasting harm could occur if the other party were notified before the order was issued. The court found that the mother’s application did not provide the necessary facts and failed to meet this legal requirement. The appeals court also ruled that the trial judge had wrongly ignored important evidence about the father’s lawful efforts to enforce his parenting rights. Under Michigan law, trying to contact one’s child or going to a residence with police officers to carry out a valid court order does not, by itself, amount to unlawful harassment. Although the protection order was due to expire in early 2026, the appeals court stressed that the legal challenge was still important. Keeping an invalid protection order in state law enforcement databases can leave a lasting record that damages a person’s reputation and limits certain legal rights, including the ability to obtain a firearm licence. The Michigan Court of Appeals directed the lower court to issue an immediate order formally ending the protection order when the case returns to the circuit court.