Volodarsky v. Tarachanskaya

In Volodarsky v. Tarachanskaya, 397 Md. 291, 916 A.2d 991 (2007), the court below was presented with a dispute between a mother and father over which of them should have custody of, or visitation with, their daughter, a dispute that revolved around conflicting testimony as to whether the father had sexually abused the child. Id. at 292-93. "Persuaded" that the child at issue had been "exposed to sexual behavior," although "not . . . convinced by a preponderance of the evidence that she had been the victim of sexual abuse, or that her father had perpetrated sexual abuse," the Volodarsky circuit court, after awarding sole custody of the daughter to the mother, nonetheless precluded visitation with the father "other than in a therapeutic setting." Id. at 302-03. It did not, however, totally deny the father all right of visitation, as did the court below. The pertinent issue before the Court of Appeals in Volodarsky was whether the circuit court's "finding or determination" that abuse or neglect had likely occurred must "at a minimum . . . be made by at least a preponderance of the evidence." Id. at 304. The Court of Appeals concluded that, "in the context of FL 9-101," the reasonable-grounds-to-believe language of the statute and the preponderance-of-the-evidence standard were not "different standards of proof." Id. In fact, the preponderance standard, the Court of Appeals opined, was the correct standard for the circuit court to apply in determining whether there were reasonable grounds to believe that abuse or neglect had occurred. Id. at 308.