Opinion ID: 1874397
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 6

Heading: One Family/One Judge

Text: Finally, the principal opinion concludes that limiting the right to disqualify the judge in proceedings to terminate parental rights is consistent with the one family/one judge system supposedly implemented when Missouri adopted the family court system established in chapter 487. However, nothing in the actual language or structure of chapter 487 adopts a one family-one judge system. There are no provisions in chapter 487 mandating that one judge adjudicate all petitions filed after the court assumes jurisdiction. Chapter 487 does nothing more than establish family court divisions in some judicial circuits, define the jurisdiction of those divisions, set the qualifications for family court division judges and commissioners, and establish the general administrative structure for the family court division. Given the lack of statutory support for the one family/one judge concept, the principal opinion turns to a student comment published in the University of Missouri-Kansas City Law Review. See, Paul Williams, Symposium Issue: Children and the Law: A Unified Family Court for Missouri, 63 UMKC L.Rev. 383, 284 (Spring 1995). The student comment is well written, but it is not law itself and cites no law to support the proposition that chapter 487 adopts a one family, one judge system. The comment cites a 1993 report by an American Bar Association Presidential Working Group and a 1993 newspaper article in which an advocate states her non-legal opinion that Missouri has adopted a one family-one judge system. A student comment in a law review neither establishes the existence of the one family, one judge system advocated by the principal opinion, nor supports the conclusion that a petition to terminate parental rights is but a supplemental petition. Countless psychological and child development studies have shown that children especially infants and young children under the age of fivewho are needlessly separated from their familiar parent suffer resulting deficits in their emotional and intellectual development. Joseph Goldstein, Albert J. Solnit, Sonja Goldstein and Anna Freud, The Best Interests of the Child: The Least Detrimental Alternative, 20 (1996). When family integrity is broken or weakened by state intrusion, [the child's] needs are thwarted.... The effect on the child's developmental progress is likely to be detrimental. Id. at 90. When the issues involved so dramatically impact the lives of those involved, the courts should not curtail time-tested safeguards to fairness and legitimacy unless there is clear legal authority requiring them to do so. I would follow the sound reasoning in Brault and hold once again that a petition to terminate parental rights is an independent civil action entitling parents in all cases to move for disqualification of the judge.