Despite their 2023 separation, Fleschner initially continued sharing caregiving responsibilities and maintaining regular contact with the child.
A relationship that became family
Fleschner began dating Scheid in 2015, when her daughter was about 2 years old, the Indiana Court of Appeals said. In September 2025, Fleschner filed a petition seeking third-party parental and visitation rights.
The Indiana Court of Appeals said Scheid originally agreed to stay in touch and the former couple followed an arrangement in which the child spent every other week with each of them. The following year the couple moved in together, and as the relationship grew, Scheid and her daughter both began referring to him as the father of the child. The arrangement lasted about two years, and included holidays spent with Fleschner’s family, and a week-long vacation. In his petition, he originally asked for joint custody, but at the evidentiary hearing he asked for visitation. But the Indiana Court of Appeals noted that courts generally presume that fit parents act in the best interests of their children. A third party petitioner for visitation must overcome this presumption by sufficient proof.
For a child, the person who takes on the responsibilities of a parent can become just as important as a biological parent. But when an unmarried couple splits, the emotional bonds built in the relationship don’t automatically translate into legally enforceable parental rights. This is the difference an Indiana man learned after an appeals court ruled that he was not entitled to court-ordered visitation with the daughter he helped raise with his former partner for eight years. In that situation, the Indiana Court of Appeals upheld a lower court’s refusal of a petition by Jordan Fleschner to establish visitation with the daughter of his former partner, Rachel Scheid. The court ruled that Fleschner did not overcome a legal presumption that the mother’s decisions about her child’s welfare are in the child’s best interests.