Legal Question in Family Law in California

Please consult with a MI attorney on how to proceed.

It is a MI case. Since the father continues to reside in MI, you cannot have the case transferred to CA. So you need to ask this question again selecting MI as the relevant state. I can tell you, however, that unless MI is some kind of Alice in Wonderland world compared to CA, the answer is going to be: "Can he? In an appropriate case, yes. Can he in your case? Who knows. Custody disputes are decided on the specific facts and circumstances of each case by a judge applying his or her own personal evaluation of what is best for the child(ren) based on those facts and circumstances, with only broad guidance from the law. So there is no way even to make an educated guess what a judge would do without evaluating all the facts and circumstances, and even then a judge may well do something else."