Title: Sparks v. Sparks

State: utah

Issuer: Utah Supreme Court

Document:

508 P.2d 531 (1973) 29 Utah 2d 263 Michael Lowell SPARKS, Plaintiff and Appellant, v. Barbara Jo Ann SPARKS, Defendant and Respondent. No. 12878. Supreme Court of Utah. March 23, 1973. David E. Bean, of Bean, Bean & Smedley, Layton, for plaintiff-appellant. HENRIOD, Justice. Appeal from a judgment, after a divorce and after an unsuccessful hearing instituted by Mr. S. to change the decreed custody to the mother of two infant boys, six and three. Affirmed, with no costs awarded. The thrust of this case is simply that Mr. S. claims and suggests that Mrs. S., after the divorce, had a biological bent that led her to live with a fellow that she intended to marry but didn't, and that she indulged in other indiscretions inimical to the six-year-old's disturbed male syndrome. This conclusion was inculcated here by an unmarried lady witness who apparently was an accomplished but youthful child psychologist but few years out of college, whose testimony the trial court did not seem to purchase. Here's what the stolid sage of the Second District trial court had to say, all of which is supported by pretty good believable evidence: Counsel for Mr. S. takes a personal, philosophical and asserted moral exception to two cases decided by this Court, both by unanimous opinions. These are Stuber v. Stuber[1] and Dearden v. Dearden,[2] wherein the authors' bona fides are not at all challenged, but where it is suggested that there is such a person as an attentive, affectionate, fit and proper mother who nonetheless might have done something that comes naturally, but perhaps without established legal sanction, but possibly born of some kind of explainable emotion or influence or maybe even economics, or other reason about which an irate ex-husband, or a child psychologist, or even a priest or a lawyer might express some kind of compunction. We are not unmindful of the apparent sincerity of counsel's negative appraisal of the Stuber and Dearden cases, nor his criticism of about 17 District Judges on the Wasatch Front, comprising four counties out of 29, in which such judges serve about 80 per cent of the people in Utah, when he volunteers the following gratuity which we consider to be an inaccurate appraisal and condemnation of those robed gentlemen: which commentary now may include the decision here, with which quotation others, including us, may exercise a prerogative to disagree. CALLISTER, C.J., and ELLETT, CROCKETT, and TUCKETT, JJ., concur. [1] 121 Utah 632, 244 P.2d 650 (1962). [2] 15 Utah 2d 105, 388 P.2d 230 (1964).