Opinion ID: 1959334
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: Authority of Circuit Court

Text: DSS contends that Maryland law imposes on a parent a clear and firm obligation to support his or her minor children and that that obligation cannot be bargained away by the parents or terminated by court action other than through a judgment of adoption or guardianship entered pursuant to Fam.Law art. title 5, subt. 3. It urges indeed that a circuit court has no jurisdiction to terminate that obligation otherwise. David purports to find such jurisdiction either under some general inherent power of an equity court or under Fam.Law art. § 1-201(a). As this Court has taken pains to point out in a number of recent cases, the term jurisdiction encompasses a number of different meanings. As applied to courts, it refers to the power to act with regard to a subject matter which `is conferred by the sovereign authority which organizes the court, and is to be sought for in the general nature of its powers, or in authority specially conferred.' Pulley v. State, supra, 287 Md. 406, 416, 412 A.2d 1244, 1249 (quoting Cooper v. Reynolds' Lessee, 77 U.S. (10 Wall.) 308, 316, 19 L.Ed. 931, 932 (1870)). We continued in Pulley that [i]f by that law which defines the authority of the court, a judicial body is given the power to render a judgment over that class of cases within which a particular one falls, then its action cannot be assailed for want of subject matter jurisdiction. Id. [287 Md.] at 416, 412 A.2d 1244 (quoting First Federated Com. Tr. v. Comm'r, 272 Md. 329, 335, 322 A.2d 539, 543 (1974)) (emphasis in First Federated ). See also Block v. State, 286 Md. 266, 407 A.2d 320 (1979); Parks v. State, 287 Md. 11, 410 A.2d 597 (1980). To some extent, of course, application of this principle depends on how one defines the generic class of cases. Here, the class is defined by the authority to terminate parental rights and obligations. There is no doubt, and indeed DSS necessarily concedes, that equity courts do have the power  the fundamental jurisdiction  to terminate those rights and obligations. An order of an equity court doing so is therefore not void for want of subject matter jurisdiction. The question rather is under what circumstances the court may appropriately exercise that jurisdiction; is it authorized, by some provision of law or by some inherent authority, to exercise it in this kind of case? That is the issue we need to examine. Parenthood is both a biological and a legal status. By nature and by law, it confers rights and imposes duties. One of the most basic of these is the obligation of the parent to support the child until the law determines that he is able to care for himself. As it is the obligation of the parent to provide that support, so it is the right of the child to expect it. Blackstone said it eloquently: The duty of parents to provide for the maintenance of their children is a principle of natural law; an obligation, says [Baron Samuel von] Puffendorf [(1632-94)], laid on them not only by nature herself, but by their own proper act, in bringing them into the world: for they would be in the highest manner injurious to their issue, if they only gave their children life that they might afterwards see them perish. By begetting them, therefore, they have entered into a voluntary obligation to endeavor, as far as in them lies, that the life which they have bestowed shall be supported and preserved. And thus the children have the perfect right of receiving maintenance from their parents. 1 W. Blackstone, Commentaries  (emphasis in original). Maryland law, less eloquent but more succinct, states the same principle. Fam.Law art. § 5-203 makes the parents the natural guardians of their minor child and jointly and severally responsible for the child's support, care, nurture, welfare, and education.... Section 10-203 declares it a misdemeanor for a parent to willfully fail to provide for the support of his or her minor child or to desert his or her minor child. It is a fact of history, of course, that parents have not always been able or willing to fulfill this fundamental obligation. In some societies, the law (or custom) permitted infanticide, the selling of children by their fathers, and the expulsion of rebellious or disobedient children. Fortunately, these mechanisms have never been been part of our established jurisprudence. A more humane approach, which we find even among the ancient Babylonians, Egyptians, and Greeks was that of adoption, whereby children born to one family were formally given to and raised and supported by another. See generally Presser, The Historical Background of the American Law of Adoption, 11 Jour. of Family Law 443 (1971); Brosnan, The Law of Adoption, 22 Colum.L.Rev. 332 (1922); Huard, The Law of Adoption: Ancient and Modern, 9 Vand.L.Rev. 743 (1956). The Code of Hammurabi (circa 2250 B.C.) provided for and regulated adoptions. See C. Johns, Babylonian and Assyrian Laws, Contracts and Letters 61, 154-60 (1904 Reprint ed. 1987); H. Maine, Ancient Law 22 (1861 Dorset Press ed. 1986). Roman law did likewise. See Institutes of Justinian, Bk. 1, Title XI; Watts, Cicero, The Speeches, De Domo Sua, xiii, xiv, at 175-81 (Loeb ed. 1923). The legal concept of adoption, as set forth in Roman law, was picked up in many of the civil law societies whose legal structure emanated from the Roman. But, save for some isolated instances, it never found its way into the common law. [5] See Hillers v. Taylor, 108 Md. 148, 155-56, 69 A. 715, 718 (1908): The adoption of children, although a practice of great antiquity recognized by the civil law throughout its entire history and observed in countries whose jurisprudence is founded on that law, was unknown to the common law and exists in States, which have inherited that system of jurisprudence, only by virtue of statute. See also Spencer v. Franks, 173 Md. 73, 195 A. 306 (1937); Atkins v. Gose, 189 Md. 542, 56 A.2d 697 (1948). Indeed, writing prior to the 1926 enactment of a statute by Parliament specifically authorizing adoptions, one learned English authority observed: The law of England knows nothing of adoption. Its theory is that the father, as legal guardian  and the same principle applies to the mother  cannot abdicate by any contract the position of parental responsibility, or rid himself irrevocably of the sacred duties of fatherhood. He may purport to do so, but the law will not recognize any such promise as binding; it allows him to retract and repudiate it at any time. Edward Manson, Esq., of the Middle Temple, London, quoted in Brosnan, supra, 22 Colum.L.Rev. at 335. Mr. Manson's pronouncement finds clear support in Humphrys v. Polak, [1901] 2 K.B. 385 (C.A.). Pursuant to contract, the mother of an illegitimate child [6] placed the child with the defendants, for them to raise and maintain her as though she were the defendants' own child, and for ever to relieve the plaintiff from all liability and responsibility in connection with the bringing up of the said child.... Id. at 385. After about four months, the defendants refused to maintain the child any longer, whereupon the mother sued for breach of the contract. Affirming an order striking out the claim, the court held that the mother could not divest herself of her responsibilities toward the child. Under the contract, said Lord Justice Stirling, the defendants were to undertake the duties which the law imposes on the mother, and to have the rights which the law gives her in relation to the child. In my opinion, the law does not permit such a transfer of the mother's rights and liabilities. Id. at 390. See also Waterhouse v. Waterhouse, 94 L.T. 133, 22 T.L.R. 195, 50 Sol. J. 169 (1905), where Justice Buckley, denying an injunction to restrain an adult child from entering his father's house, said, in pertinent part: [T]he duty arising from the relation of parent and child, whether directly enforceable or not, is a duty of which the parent can in no circumstances divest himself. The duty is not limited to providing maintenance during infancy or any other time. It is a duty so to conduct himself in all respects towards his child as is right in him, he being his father. This was also true in the United States. It was not an uncommon practice in the 17th and 18th centuries for impecunious parents to bind or apprentice children to service for other families, and a few cases exist in which a court precluded a parent from regaining physical custody of a child who had been apprenticed to another family and who was being well-treated. [7] Jurisdiction to appoint and supervise guardians for orphans and abandoned children also clearly existed, but it does not appear that there was any legal authority under the common law in this State for a total relinquishment of parental rights and obligations or any inherent authority in any court to terminate them. The first clear authorization for the legal termination of the entire parental relationship came with the adoption statutes, the earliest of which, in Maryland, appeared in the first half of the 19th Century in the form of private bills. [8] General adoption statutes authorizing courts to enter decrees of adoption did not appear until the mid-19th Century  Mississippi in 1846, Massachusetts in 1851. Maryland's initial general adoption statute was enacted in 1892. See 1892 Md. Laws, ch. 244. Most States, including Maryland, have since broadened the authority of their equity courts to terminate parental rights in proceedings that do not lead directly to an adoption. In most such instances, however, the basis for the termination is that the child has essentially been abandoned, abused, or severely neglected, and the law looks to an eventual adoption, with custody in the meanwhile being vested in a social services or child placement agency or a court-designated relative. Some of the statutes enacted in other States appear to permit a termination order to be based solely or principally on a voluntary relinquishment of parental rights by the affected parent. [9] Maryland has not gone that far. The only express statutory authorization for a court to terminate parental rights and obligations short of adoption is contained in Fam.Law art. §§ 5-313 and 5-317, which permit a circuit court to terminate those rights and obligations through a decree of guardianship. But such a decree may be entered only upon petition of a child placement agency or an attorney for the child. Moreover, the statute looks to the termination of the rights of both natural parents and the granting of custody of the child to a child placement agency for adoption. It clearly does not permit the kind of order entered in this case. The only other source of authority cited to us by David is § 1-201(a) of the Family Law article. That section vests in an equity court jurisdiction over adoption of a child, alimony, annulment of a marriage, divorce, custody or guardianship of a child, visitation of a child, legitimation of a child, paternity, and support of a child. Nothing in that statute, however, purports to authorize the court to terminate a parental relationship other than through a decree of adoption or guardianship. For these reasons, we conclude that the circuit court erred in entering the judgment of September 4, 1987, the order of September 15, 1987, and the order of August 24, 1989. Absent specific statutory authorization which does not now exist in this State, a circuit court has no authority to terminate a parental relationship other than through a decree of adoption or guardianship under title 5, subtitle 3 of the Family Law article. The case will therefore be remanded for an order dismissing Bonnie's petition. This will, of course, require the court to conduct further proceedings on DSS's complaint for an increase in child support.