In re Parentage of R.C.

── In re Parentage of R.C. ── Court: Appellate Court of Illinois Date: April 14, 2026 Category: General 2026 IL App (1st) 250330-U SECOND DIVISION April 14, 2026 No. 1-25-0330 NOTICE: This order was filed under Supreme Court Rule 23 and is not precedent except in the limited circumstances allowed under Rule 23(e)(1). ______________________________________________________________________________ IN THE APPELLATE COURT OF ILLINOIS FIRST JUDICIAL DISTRICT ______________________________________________________________________________ IN RE PARENTAGE OF R.C. and E.C.: ) ) Appeal from the SHARON SELEB, ) Circuit Court of ) Cook County Petitioner-Appellant, ) ) 13 D 80410 v. ) ) Honorable SCOTT CLARK, ) Rosa M. Silva, ) Judge Presiding Respondent-Appellee. ) _____________________________________________________________________________ JUSTICE ELLIS delivered the judgment of the court. Justices McBride and D.B Walker concurred in the judgment. ORDER ¶1 Held: Affirmed. Decision to allow joint decision-making and equal parenting time was not against manifest weight of evidence. ¶2 After years of litigation, Sharon Seleb and Scott Clark, unmarried parents of two children, entered into an agreed allocation of parental responsibility in 2019. The agreed judgment included 50/50 parenting time and joint decision-making authority over all decisions but education, which was granted solely to Scott. ¶3 In 2021, Scott moved to Michigan and Sharon filed a petition to modify the agreed judgment. The court modified the judgment to give Sharon the vast majority of parenting time. No. 1-25-0330 Then Scott returned to Chicago and ultimately requested that his equal parenting time be restored. The court reimposed the original agreement on parenting time, returning Scott’s share to fifty percent. Sharon appeals that judgment. ¶4 Sharon also requested sole decision-making authority over all major decisions involving the child. The court denied that request but did, for the first time, give Sharon equal decision- making authority over education decisions for the children. Sharon appeals that judgment, too. ¶5 We find no error in the court’s rulings and affirm. ¶6 BACKGROUND ¶7 Sharon and Scott were never married and had two children: one born in 2013, the other in 2016. While he is healthy now, the younger child was born premature and required extremely intensive care for the first few years of his life due to issues with his lungs. ¶8 The parties had a stormy relationship even before the birth of the first child; they each sought sole custody of their firstborn in 2013 before eventually agreeing to joint custody. Their attempts at reconciliation were spotty and short-lived, but they did result in the birth of a second child in 2016. We need not wade into the full history. Suffice it to say that, after years of back- and-forth litigation, including several motions for contempt, the court finally entered an Agreed Allocation Judgment (AAJ) in April 2019. ¶9 Relevant to this appeal, the AAJ provided that the parties agreed to a “2-2-3” parenting schedule during the school year—meaning, essentially, that one parent had the kids Monday to Wednesday, the other Wednesday to