Orchard v. Orchard

This appeal requires us to resolve an interstate custody dispute between the mother, Robin Orchard, and the father, Tristan Orchard. At the time of oral argument, a difference had arisen between a judge seeking to make custody orders in the father’s home State of Michigan, and a judge of the Massachusetts Probate and Family Court.

*776We take the facts from the findings of the Probate Court judge, supplemented by materials in the record. The parties met in October of 1985, and in April of 1987, a daughter, Amber, was bom in Quincy.1 On June 11, 1988, the parties were married in South Weymouth. The…