Opinion ID: 2257561
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 9

Heading: Requirement of Harm

Text: Experience has taught us the lesson that the parental relationship is not an infallible guarantee that a parent will provide the care and concern essential to a child's proper development. In such cases, the General Assembly has established guidelines and procedures that permit state-enforced custody only when a child is found delinquent or dependent as defined by law, or in cases of abuse, deprivation, or neglect. Thus, the extreme solution of termination of parental rights rests on a demonstration of unfitness of a parent or upon harm to the child. At the other end of the custody spectrum is the clash between the child's parents and the inevitable dissolution of the family that attends a custody dispute between husband and wife. These disputes have long been guided by the controlling direction to award custody consistent with the best interests of the child. The middle ground, where a third party seeks partial custody and where there is no state-enforced custody, does not demand the stringent harm-to-the-child standard for resolution. I believe that it requires the delicate balancing of fundamental rights. Troxel specifically declined to address the so-called harm standard, and it also failed to articulate an inadequate care requirement. Rather, the due process right that the Supreme Court affirmed in Troxel is important but limited: a court may not override a parent's decision about the care or custody of a child simply because the court determines that the decision is not in the child's best interest, as the trial court did in Troxel regarding a grandparent's interest in visitation. Instead, the court must presume that a fit parent's decision is in the best interest of the child, and the court may reach a decision contrary to the wishes of the parent only if there is evidence sufficient to overcome that presumption. Troxel goes no further. I am inclined to believe that the Troxel plurality would have used stronger language if it thought that parental discretion may only be outweighed upon a showing of harm to the child. Troxel does require the state to give some special weight to the interest of a parent in decisions regarding a child. Troxel v. Granville, 530 U.S. 57, 73, 120 S.Ct. 2054, 147 L.Ed.2d 49 (2000) (plurality opinion). However, the Pennsylvania statute as the Majority applies it here, responds to that mandate and appropriately protects the father's due process rights. Father received the deference to his due process rights that Troxel requires. Therefore, I cannot adopt the assertion of the Dissent that some showing of harm to the child must be shown before the courts can implement the Act. That contention ignores the state's legitimate interest in the welfare of the child.