Hunter v. Hunter

This child custody case requires us to examine (1) the scope of the constitutional rights of natural parents in raising their children, (2) how provisions of Michigan’s Child Custody Act (CCA)1 interact with those rights, and (3) whether the circuit court in this case applied the correct legal standards (a) in finding defendant,2 the children’s biological mother, to be an unfit parent and (b) in awarding legal and physical custody of her four children to the children’s paternal uncle and his wife.

We conclude that the circuit court did not apply the correct legal standards. We also overrule…