Filed 8/17/26 Rahemo v. Naworah CA4/1
NOT TO BE PUBLISHED IN OFFICIAL REPORTS
California Rules of Court, rule 8.1115(a), prohibits courts and parties from citing or relying on opinions not certified for
publication or ordered published, except as specified by rule 8.1115(b). This opinion has not been certified for publication
or ordered published for purposes of rule 8.1115.
COURT OF APPEAL, FOURTH APPELLATE DISTRICT
DIVISION ONE
STATE OF CALIFORNIA
RAMIZ RAHEMO, D085786
Appellant, (Super. Ct. No. 23FL003626E)
v.
MASSARA NAWORAH,
Respondent.
APPEAL from an order of the Superior Court of San Diego County,
Charles E. Bell, Judge. Affirmed.
Ramiz Rahemo, in pro. per., for Appellant.
Massara Naworah, in pro. per., for Respondent.
I
INTRODUCTION
Ramiz Rahemo (Father) appeals a family court order awarding sole
legal custody and physical custody of his two minor children to their mother,
Massara Naworah (Mother), subject to a step-up parenting plan that grants
Father progressively more parenting time upon his completion of certain
benchmarks. Father asks us to reverse the order on the following grounds:
(1) the Family Court Services (FCS) department of the family court is
unlawfully biased against men because it employs only female counselors;
(2) the court adopted the custody and visitation recommendation of an FCS
counselor who was allegedly removed from the case for bias or poor
performance; (3) the court did not factor Mother’s violation of prior court
visitation orders into its decisionmaking; and (4) the court did not make the
findings required by Family Code section 3044.1 We reject these arguments
and affirm the order.
II
BACKGROUND2
Mother and Father married in November 2018, and a petition to
dissolve the marriage was filed in April 2023. They had two children
together during the marriage.
In December 2023, the family court issued a three-year domestic
violence restraining order (DVRO) identifying Father as the restrained party
1 Undesignated statutory references are to the Family Code.
2 Our task of summarizing the facts was significantly hindered by both
parties’ failure to support their statements of fact with citations to the
appellate record. California Rules of Court, rule 8.204(a)(1)(C) provides that
appellate briefs must “[s]upport any reference to a matter in the record by a
citation to the volume and page number of the record where the matter
appears.” This rule “is intended to enable the reviewing court to locate
relevant portions of the record ‘without thumbing through and rereading
[other] portions of a brief.’ [Citation.] To provide record citations for alleged
facts at some points in a brief, but not at others, frustrates the purpose of
that rule, and courts will decline to consider any factual assertion
unsupported by record citation at the point where it is asserted.” (Alki
Partners, LP v. DB Fund Services, LLC (2016) 4 Cal.App.5th 574, 590, fn. 8.)
2
and listing both Mother and the children as protected parties.3 The court
also awarded sole legal custody and primary physical custody to Mother, and
granted Father supervised visitation rights.
In May 2024, the court granted Mother’s request to move away with
the children from California to Florida. Mother and the children relocated to
Florida soon afterwards.
In June 2024, the court found Mother in contempt for disobeying court
visitation orders and sentenced her to three years of informal probation.
A few weeks later, Father filed a request for order (RFO) to change the
custody arrangement and visitation schedule. Father requested joint legal
and physical custody of the children, unsupervised visitation rights, and a
revised holiday schedule. He sought the modification due to Mother’s
violation of the court’s prior visitation orders and his substantial completion
of a 52-week domestic violence training program. At the time, Father had
completed 44 weeks of the domestic violence training program.
In September 2024, Mother and Father separately participated in an
FCS conference with a counselor, who prepared a report and
recommendations for the family court’s consideration. According to the
report, the parties agreed Mother would retain primary physical custody.
They also agreed Father would be entitled to scheduled telephone and video
contacts with the children. However, they disagreed on several other matters
including legal custody, a parenting plan, vacation time, holiday time, and
school breaks.
3 The DVRO is not included in the record and the circumstances
underpinning the DVRO are not apparent from the record.
3
As to these disputed issues, the FCS counselor recommended the
following: Mother shall retain sole legal custody of the children due to the
existing DVRO and potential safety concerns if both parents were required to
make legal decisions about the children; after Father provides proof that he
has completed at least 49 classes of his 52-week domestic violence training
program, he shall be entitled to five consecutive days of unsupervised
parenting time in Florida with the long-term goal of exercising parenting
time in California; and upon completion of the parenting time just discussed,
Father shall have the option to exercise parenting time in San Diego during
spring break each year, two weeks of summer break, one week of fall break
every other year, and half of winter break each year. The counselor further
recommended that Father receive up to one week per month of parenting
time in Florida when the children are not on their school breaks if Father can
care for the children in Florida.
The family court conducted an RFO hearing and family resolution
conference on November 12, 2024. Thereafter, the court issued a written
order adopting the recommendations of the FCS counselor, subject to minor
modifications not pertinent to the present appeal.4
4 While this appeal was pending, we granted Father’s motion to augment
the record with the FCS counselor’s report and the family court’s findings and
order after the RFO hearing. We deferred consideration of the motion insofar
as it sought augmentation for additional documents Father submitted to the
family court in November 2024, including a certificate of completion for the
52-week domestic violence training program, an FCS data sheet, a complaint
Father made to FCS and FCS’s response thereto, and a minute order
granting Mother’s move-away request. We now grant the motion to augment
the record with these additional materials.
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III
DISCUSSION
A. Legal Standards
Proceeding in propria persona, Father appeals the order granting legal
custody and physical custody of his two minor children to Mother. “ ‘To
prevail on appeal, an appellant must establish both error and prejudice from
that error. [Citation.] In order to demonstrate error, an appellant must
supply the reviewing court with some cogent argument supported by legal
analysis and citation to the record. Rather than scour the record unguided,
we may decide that the appellant has forfeited a point urged on appeal when
it is not supported by accurate citations to the record. [Citations.] Similarly,
we may disregard conclusory arguments that are not supported by pertinent
legal authority.’ ”5 (Champir, LLC v. Fairbanks Ranch Assn. (2021) 66
Cal.App.5th 583, 597 (Champir); see United Grand Corp. v. Malibu
Hillbillies, LLC (2019) 36 Cal.App.5th 142, 146 (United Grand) [“ ‘an
appellant must supply the reviewing court with some cogent argument
supported by legal analysis and citation to the record’ ”].)
“[T]he record does not include a reporter’s transcript of the change of
custody hearing, which severely impairs analysis of [F]ather’s assertions. ‘ “A
judgment or order of the [trial] court is presumed correct. All intendments
5 These rules apply to Father, even though he is a self-represented party.
A self-represented “ ‘party is to be treated like any other party and is entitled
to the same, but no greater consideration than other litigants and
attorneys.’ ” (Nwosu v. Uba (2004) 122 Cal.App.4th 1229, 1247.) “In other
words, when a litigant accepts the risks of proceeding without counsel, he or
she is stuck with the outcome, and has no greater opportunity to cast off an
unfavorable judgment than he or she would if represented by counsel.”
(Burnete v. La Casa Dana Apartments (2007) 148 Cal.App.4th 1262, 1267.)
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and presumptions are indulged to support it on matters as to which the
record is silent ....” (Orig. italics.) [Citation.]’ [Citation.] It is the appellant’s
affirmative duty to show error by an adequate record. [Citation.] ‘A
necessary corollary to this rule [is] that a record is inadequate, and appellant
defaults, if the appellant predicates error only on the part of the record he
provides the trial court, but ignores or does not present to the appellate court
portions of the proceedings below which may provide grounds upon which the
decision of the trial court could be affirmed.’ ” (Osgood v. Landon (2005) 127
Cal.App.4th 425, 435 (Osgood).)
“The standard of appellate review of custody and visitation orders is
the deferential abuse of discretion test. [Citation.] The precise measure is
whether the trial court could have reasonably concluded that the order in
question advanced the ‘best interest’ of the child. We are required to uphold
the ruling if it is correct on any basis, regardless of whether such basis was
actually invoked.” (In re Marriage of Burgess (1996) 13 Cal.4th 25, 32.)
B. Analysis
Father raises four claims of error on appeal. We address each of these
arguments in turn.
First, Father contends the FCS department of the family court utilizes
only female counselors, which “automatically” biases all FCS reports and
recommendations in favor of mothers and against fathers. According to
Father, FCS reports and recommendations do not accurately reflect the
“psychology” or “perspectives” of fathers because they are written by women.
Father asserts this alleged bias against fathers violated his equal protection
and due process rights under the state and federal constitutions, state and
international law, and canons of judicial ethics.
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As an initial matter, Father provides no factual support or record
citations to substantiate his bare assertion that FCS utilizes only female
counselors. The claim is forfeited for that reason. (Champir, supra, 66
Cal.App.5th at p. 597; United Grand, supra, 36 Cal.App.5th at p. 146.) But
even if Father had supported his argument with proper record citations, we
reject the abhorrent and utterly meritless implication of his claim—that
women are incapable of rendering unbiased evaluations in custody cases due
to their sex. “ ‘The fact that an individual belongs to a minority does not
render one biased or prejudiced, or raise doubts about one’s impartiality:
“that one is black does not mean, ipso facto, that he is anti-white; no more
than being Jewish implies being anti-Catholic, or being Catholic implies
being anti-Protestant.” ’ ” (Rebmann v. Rohde (2011) 196 Cal.App.4th 1283,
1293; accord Briganti v. Chow (2019) 42 Cal.App.5th 504, 511 [“We review
judgments and judicial rulings, not physical or other supposed personal
characteristics of superior court judges.”].) Likewise, one’s identity as a
woman does not mean that one is anti-man or incapable of making an
unbiased report and recommendation that properly considers the interests
and perspectives of all parties.
Second, Father asserts the family court erred by adopting the
recommendations of the counselor who oversaw the FCS conference because
the FCS department “fired” the counselor after she prepared her report. The
record does not support this claim. Rather, it reveals that Father submitted
a complaint to FCS arguing the counselor was “biased” and had “twisted [his]
words” in her report. In response, a supervising FCS counselor sent Father a
letter stating that only a judge could assess his complaints about perceived
inaccuracies in the FCS report. However, the supervisor stated in closing
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that if Father should “require another appointment at Family Court Services,
[his] case [would] be assigned to a different Family Court Counselor.”
As the record makes clear, the counselor who conducted the FCS
conference was not “fired” based on a finding of poor performance or
wrongdoing, as Father’s appellate brief suggests. Indeed, the supervising
FCS counselor expressly declined to address the merits of Father’s
complaints. Instead, the FCS department simply advised Father it would
assign a different counselor to him for future appointments, apparently due
to his dissatisfaction with the counselor who had overseen the FCS
conference and prepared the report. In any event, Father has provided no
legal authority for the proposition that it is improper or unlawful for a court,
in the exercise of its independent judgment, to adopt the custody and
visitation recommendations of a counselor who is removed or reassigned from
a case before its completion. Therefore, Father’s claim fails.
Third, Father argues the family court erred because it disregarded
Mother’s violation of prior visitation orders while determining the custody
and visitation arrangement that was in the best interests of the children. To
support this argument, Father emphasizes that the court did not discuss
Mother’s violations in the custody and visitation order. We are not
persuaded. Section 3048 specifies the required contents for custody and
visitation orders. It does not obligate a court to expressly state each factor it
considers when determining the custody and visitation arrangement that is
in the best interests of a child. Further, the absence of a reporter’s transcript
for the RFO hearing and family resolution conference precludes us from
assessing whether the court in fact contemplated Mother’s violations during
the hearing. As the appellant, Father bears the burden of providing us with
an adequate appellate record. (Osgood, supra, 127 Cal.App.4th at p. 435.)
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Applying the presumption of correctness, we infer the court considered all
appropriate factors during the unreported hearing.
Fourth, Father contends the family court erred by failing to specify in
its custody and visitation order that his completion of the 52-week domestic
violence training program overcame the “rebuttable presumption that an
award of sole or joint physical or legal custody of a child to a person who has
perpetrated domestic violence is detrimental to the best interest of the child.”
(§ 3044, subd. (a).) Father’s argument is without merit. A court need only
specify the reasons for its decision “[i]f the court determines that the
presumption in subdivision (a) has been overcome ….” (Id., subd. (f)(2); see
Jaime G. v. H.L. (2018) 25 Cal.App.5th 794, 805 [“When a trial court decides
the evidence does indeed rebut [the] presumption, the statute requires the
court to state the reasons for this decision.”].) Here, Father has not directed
us to any court finding that Father overcame the rebuttable presumption;
absent such a finding, the court was not required to make findings specific to
each factor under section 3044. Further, even if the court had made such a
finding, a court may “state its reasons in writing or on the record ….” (§ 3044,
subd. (f)(2), italics added.) Because Father has not provided a reporter’s
transcript from the RFO hearing and family resolution conference, we must
infer the court stated any necessary findings during the unreported hearing.
Finally, insofar as Father implies that his completion of a domestic
violence training program necessarily compelled the court to find that he
overcame the rebuttable presumption in section 3044, subdivision (a), he is
mistaken. To overcome the presumption, a court must find it is in the best
interest of the child to give physical or legal custody to the domestic violence
perpetrator. (§ 3044, subd. (b)(1).) The court must also find that seven
enumerated factors, on balance, support the legislative findings of
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section 3020. (Id., subd. (b).) One such factor is the domestic violence
perpetrator’s successful completion of “a batterer’s treatment program”
satisfying certain statutory criteria. (Id., subd. (b)(2)(A).) Thus, Father’s
completion of a 52-week domestic violence training program, while
commendable, is just one factor among many others to be considered.
Standing alone, it is neither necessary nor sufficient to overcome the
rebuttable presumption set forth in section 3044, subdivision (a). (See Jason
P. v. Danielle S. (2017) 9 Cal.App.5th 1000, 1028 [“one of the factors the court
must consider in determining whether the presumption is rebutted is
whether the domestic violence perpetrator has successfully completed a
batterer’s treatment program”], italics added.)
IV
DISPOSITION
The order is affirmed. Respondent Massara Naworah is awarded her
appellate costs.
McCONNELL, P. J.
WE CONCUR:
DATO, J.
KELETY, J.
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