“Why hasn’t your son been to his father’s home since March?”
“He’s sixteen. I can’t make him.”
Sometimes that answer is true. Sometimes it’s the end of a long, ugly fight with a kid who has dug in. And sometimes it means no one has told him he has to go, imposed a consequence, called the school, or filed anything with the court. The words are identical. The parents are not.
Courts see this in child custody disputes all the time. What the statement means depends on what the parent did before saying it.
The Fair Objection
Teenagers have real autonomy. Every parent of one, divorced or not, knows that parental leverage shrinks with age. Nobody can physically put a sixteen-year-old in a car, and a court order doesn’t change that.
A parent who set expectations, imposed consequences, brought in a therapist (if therapy is what’s needed[1]), talked to the school, asked the other parent for help, and went back to court when the order was being frustrated has not failed because the child still refuses. Failure of reasonable efforts is not the same as failure to make them. That parent should not lose custody because determined parenting ran into a stubborn kid.
There is a second objection, and it is harder. Suppose the parent really did nothing. What would changing custody accomplish? The other parent can’t compel a sixteen-year-old either, and uprooting a teenager to punish a parent’s passivity may hurt the child more than the passivity did.
Both objections are right about something. The first sets the standard: effort, not results. The second limits the remedy: the response to a parent who does nothing is not automatically a change of custody. It may be findings, a therapeutic order where the facts support one[2], enforcement, or a decision that reflects the arrangement that has actually developed.
Neither objection makes the parent’s conduct irrelevant. What a parent does when the job gets hard is evidence of what kind of parent the court is dealing with.
What the Statute Lets the Court Consider
Utah Code § 81-9-204(4)(c) allows the court to consider a parent’s “capacity and willingness to function as a parent,” including parenting skills, co-parenting skills, and the ability to provide personal care rather than surrogate care. It is a “may consider” factor, not a trigger, and it is one input into the child’s best interest. How much it weighs depends on the facts.
The word doing the work here is willingness. A custody award hands a parent responsibility for a child’s daily life. A parent who tells the court that, whenever the child objects, he exercises no authority is inviting the obvious question: what would the award accomplish?
The question is not whether the parent can guarantee obedience. It is whether the parent reasonably uses the tools that come with the job, and to the best of that parent’s ability.
Utah gives added weight to the wishes of a child fourteen or older, but those wishes are not controlling (Utah Code § 81-9-204(5)(b)(ii)). Parental conduct should follow the same principle. A teenager’s preference matters. It does not become the parenting plan just because enforcing the existing one is uncomfortable.
How to Tell “Can’t” from “Won’t”
The refusal itself tells you almost nothing. Both produce the same empty chair. The evidence is what happened before it:
- What the parent told the child about the order, and how. Texts and emails matter more than recollection.
- What consequences followed: grounding, suspending phone, driving, activities, privileges.
- Whether the parent asked the other parent for help or proposed mediation.
- Whether a therapist or reunification professional was sought when the facts called for it, and when.[3]
- Whether the parent filed a Rule 7B motion, or in the Third District used the expedited process under Utah Code § 81-9-102.
None of these guarantees success, and that isn’t the point. A parent who genuinely tried several of them and failed looks very different from a parent who tried none or who phoned it in.
Chronic school refusal is a related but separate problem. It often has an anxiety or other clinical component, and it is the strongest “can’t” case there is. The test is the same (what did you do about it?), but the remedies differ, and it deserves its own treatment.
Parent-Time Refusal Is Different Because an Order Already Exists
When a court order sets the schedule, the parent has options besides silence. If the order has become unworkable, ask to change it. If it remains appropriate, work toward compliance. What a parent should not do is let the child’s refusal quietly become a de facto modification and then offer the result as proof that compliance was impossible.
Rule 7B and § 81-9-102 exist so that a parent doesn’t have to choose between self-help and doing nothing.
Widdison v. Widdison, 2022 UT App 46, is useful here, but only as an analogy. It involved affirmative interference: the custodial parent cut the father from roughly 30% of the time to essentially zero, and the Court of Appeals held the district court could treat that collapse of an established relationship as a substantial and material change in circumstances. A parent who shrugs is not the parent in Widdison. What carries over is the way courts look at a relationship that disappears and ask if a parent simply let it happen.
What This Means in Practice
For parents: Document as you go. Keep the messages that tell the child the order is not optional. Write down the consequences you imposed or tried to impose. Email/text message the other parent instead of waiting for him or her to ask. Get a therapist involved early. If a motion to the court is appropriate, file the motion sooner than feels comfortable. If the child still refuses after all that, you will have the record that protects you.
For lawyers: Build the examination around the timeline before the refusal, not the refusal. Ask for the texts, the school communications, and the provider communications (to the extent not privileged). Ask whether a Rule 7B motion was ever filed, and if not, why not. And if you represent the parent with the strong record, put it in front of the court early. It is the answer to the fair objection.
The law does not require a parent to guarantee obedience. It can and does reasonably expect the parent to try.
Utah Family Law, LC | divorceutah.com | 801-466-9277
[1] Therapy is a tool for a clinical problem, not a default response to a teenager who won’t do what she’s told. Sometimes a fifteen-year-old skips her father’s weekend because she has something better to do, resents the rules at his house, or has learned that nothing happens when she says no. That is ordinary adolescent defiance, and the response is parenting: expectations, consequences, and follow-through. A parent who declines to send a healthy but defiant teenager to therapy has not failed to make reasonable efforts. Therapy also has costs. It can delay enforcement, and it can give a child’s objection a clinical vocabulary that makes it harder to treat as what it is. Where there is a real anxiety, trauma, or estrangement problem, or a qualified professional recommends treatment, the analysis changes.
[2] A therapeutic order is appropriate when there is a problem therapy can address: a clinical condition, a ruptured relationship that a qualified professional believes can be repaired, or a recommendation from someone with the expertise to make it. It is not appropriate as a way to avoid deciding the dispute. Ordering therapy for a healthy but defiant teenager treats ordinary adolescent behavior as a condition, imposes cost and delay on both parents, and puts the child in the position of a patient for declining to follow a schedule. It also hands a therapist a job the court should do. The court is to decide whether the order will be followed, and a treatment process cannot do that for it. Courts that order therapy because it is the least confrontational available step should say so, and make findings on why the child needs it.
[3] The question is whether help was warranted, not whether it was tried. Failing to seek therapy for an ordinarily defiant teenager is not evidence of unwillingness to parent (see note 1). Ignoring a professional’s recommendation, or a court order requiring reunification therapy, is. The reverse also holds: a parent who reflexively pursues therapy in place of consequences, or uses the process to postpone enforcement, has not shown effort by doing so. Timing matters too. Seeking help early, when the refusal first appears, says more than seeking it after a motion has been filed. Proof will usually be the fact and timing of the referral, the recommendation, and whether the parent followed through, not the content of the sessions, which raises privilege issues.