Opinion ID: 1278760
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The Majority Opinion Misstates the Record.

Text: The caricature painted by the majority  that of a violent drug fiend who makes his young daughter stay with him in ramshackle accommodations frequented by shadowy characters  bears no resemblance whatsoever to the actual father involved in this case. The majority opinion approves the trial court's finding of chronic use of illegal drugs by [Mr. Taylor], sometimes in the presence of children. What the majority fails to mention is that there is not one shred of evidence in the record  not one  that Mr. Taylor used any illegal drug for well over a year before the trial. Moreover, it is worth noting that there is no allegation, much less evidence, that Mr. Taylor ever used illegal drugs, plural, as the majority opinion erroneously states. Mr. Taylor was addicted to a single illegal drug, marijuana, and by the time of trial, it is undisputed that he had not smoked marijuana in almost sixteen months. [1] Similarly, there is no allegation, much less evidence, that Mr. Taylor ever smoked marijuana in front of Sidney. Indeed, the record is devoid of any evidence that Mr. Taylor sometimes [smoked marijuana] in the presence of children, plural, as the majority opinion incorrectly states. The sum total of the evidence in the record that Mr. Taylor smoked marijuana sometimes in the presence of children consists of the trial testimony of Ms. Taylor's middle child that she once caught Mr. Taylor in the basement blowing smoke out of his mouth, which she assumed was from marijuana. [2] The majority opinion approves the trial court's finding of chronic use of illegal drugs not only by Mr. Taylor, but also by members of his family, including a niece who babysat for the child. Again, there is only one illegal drug at issue, marijuana, not illegal drugs as the majority erroneously states. Moreover, the finding of chronic use of illegal drugs by . . . a niece who babysat for the child rests entirely on the following snippet of testimony by Mr. Taylor's twenty-year-old niece on cross-examination: Q . . . Have you smoked pot. A I have. Q Have you smoked pot around Sidney? A Never. . . . . Q How long have you been smoking pot? A Oh, I don't smoke pot. I've tried it, once or twice. The majority opinion also asserts that the record reveals a complete lack of parenting skills [on Mr. Taylor's part] and a lack of motivation to improve in that regard. Not true. Rather, the record shows that in the three-and-a-half years Mr. Taylor lived at the marital residence, he took Sidney to school in the mornings, looked after her when Ms. Taylor was away on business trips, read to Sidney, took her to dental appointments, and tucked her into bed every night. He taught Sidney how to say I love you in sign language, the language of his own parents, both of whom were deaf. After the separation, he could no longer tuck Sidney in bed every night, but he took advantage of every opportunity he had to visit with her, even when it meant paying for supervised visitation. He brought her gifts, remembered her birthday, and called her regularly on the phone. Like most parents, and very unfortunately, Mr. Taylor lost his temper at times and occasionally said things to Sidney while he was living at the marital residence that he later regretted. After the separation, Mr. Taylor voluntarily entered counseling to learn how to be a better parent, to help him cope with the divorce and separation from his child, and to find better ways of managing his emotions than keeping his anger all bottled up inside until it boiled over. [3] The majority opinion claims the record shows that Mr. Taylor displayed an absence of judgment, exemplified by having the child spend the night with him in an apartment he shared with an unmarried man who brought home intoxicated women who spent the night. What the record actually shows is that when Ms. Taylor asked Mr. Taylor to leave the marital home in March of 2005, he did so with nothing more than the clothes on his back and a little cash in his wallet. A friend with a one-bedroom apartment allowed Mr. Taylor to stay on his couch until he could get back on his feet. Ms. Taylor refused to let Mr. Taylor exercise visitation with Sidney at the marital home. Thus, if Mr. Taylor was going to have visitation with his daughter, he had little choice but to have her stay with him where he was living. Sidney stayed with Mr. Taylor at his shared one-bedroom apartment on only two occasions. On one of the two visits, Mr. Taylor's roommate allowed a friend who had had too much to drink at the bar that night to stay at the apartment rather than driving home drunk. How did Mr. Taylor respond? The record shows he arranged to have all further overnight visitation with Sidney take place at his sister's house, which no one contends was in any way an inappropriate environment for the child. Moreover, there is no evidence that anything improper occurred in the child's presence on the two occasions Sidney stayed with Mr. Taylor at his apartment. By the time of trial, Mr. Taylor was living in a house where Sidney would have her own room in the event she was ever allowed to visit him again. Far from showing an absence of judgment as the majority opinion contends, the record instead reveals a conscientious father with little money who was doing the best he could to provide a safe and appropriate environment for visitation with his child. The majority opinion further states that Mr. Taylor abuse[d] . . . religion to defame [Ms. Taylor] and frighten the child, in direct violation of a court order to refrain from doing so. However, that is not what the relevant court order said. The order the majority opinion appears to be referring to is the temporary consent order entered by the trial court on April 18, 2006. In it, the trial court issued the following injunction: Each party is hereby enjoined and restrained from villifying and/or making any disparaging statements about the other to the minor child and each party is prohibited from providing their [sic] interpretation of any religious scripture to the minor. (Emphasis added.) I have searched the record in vain to find any evidence that Mr. Taylor violated this injunction. By April 18, 2006, his visits with Sidney were all closely supervised, and the contemporaneous reports prepared by the agency supervising the visits gives no indication that Mr. Taylor said anything to Sidney that could be construed as falling within the scope of the trial court's injunction. [4] The majority opinion's reference to erratic behavior, rage, and violence which led [Ms. Taylor's] older two children to live with their father to avoid Mr. Taylor relates primarily to Mr. Taylor's alleged yelling at the older children, occasional throwing of objects not directed at any person, the two occasions during the parties' marriage when Mr. Taylor spanked Sidney, and one incident, which Ms. Taylor only remembered shortly before the trial, in which Mr. Taylor allegedly slapped Sidney across the face at a cheer-leading competition before the parties separated in March 2005. As the guardian ad litem accurately stated at trial: There's no indication that Mr. Taylor ever was what we might call a child abuser. . . . I don't think . . . anybody would point to Mr. Taylor and say this guy is a chronic child abuser. That's not the situation. The record indicates that Mr. Taylor had a short fuse, but his response to losing his temper was generally to brood and say nothing rather than to lash out verbally at those around him. While Mr. Taylor's actions may demonstrate that he is not a perfect person, they fall far short of the exceptional circumstances necessary to deny a parent all in-person visitation with his or her own child, much less constitute the clear and convincing evidence of parental unfitness required to terminate Mr. Taylor's parental rights. Finally, the majority opinion notes the recommendations of the child's therapist and the guardian ad litem that the child have no contact with Mr. Taylor. As explained in greater detail below, these recommendations were unreliable as a matter of both law and fact. In terms of the law, Lorita Whitaker, the person the majority describes as the child's therapist, [5] stated clearly at trial that her recommendation to the trial court would be different if Mr. Taylor were Sidney's biological father instead of her adoptive father. In terms of the facts, Ms. Whitaker's contemporaneous, handwritten notes from her individual sessions with Sidney and the initial visitation sessions she supervised between Sidney and Mr. Taylor vividly and dramatically contradicted her trial testimony. Moreover, Ms. Whitaker never recommended that the trial court terminate Mr. Taylor's parental rights until after the guardian ad litem made a recommendation to that effect. The record contains no explanation for Ms. Whitaker's change of heart months after her last supervised visitation session with Mr. Taylor and Sidney. [6] The guardian ad litem's recommendation was equally unreliable. As explained in greater detail below, the guardian ad litem's statements at trial reflect the bizarre and legally untenable notion that an adoptive parent's parental rights do not fully vest for an unspecified period of time somewhere between three-and-a-half years and nine-and-a-half years after the adoption becomes final. As far as the facts, the guardian ad litem's recommendation rested on many of the same errors of fact relied on by the majority opinion. Moreover, it appears from the record that the guardian ad litem spent little or no time contemplating how custody and visitation could be arranged to encourage a strong parent-child relationship between Sidney and both her parents, which was, of course, the task assigned him by the trial court. Furthermore, trial courts have a responsibility to make their own independent determinations regarding what custody and visitation arrangement will best serve the child's interests. A trial court cannot abdicate its responsibility to make the hard choices by deferring totally to the recommendations of a guardian ad litem and the child's therapist. As explained above, the rest of the factual findings on which the trial court based its final judgment are clearly erroneous, leaving these two recommendations as the only support for the trial court's decision. Just as a trial court must not abdicate its responsibility to make an independent determination regarding the child's best interests in every child custody and visitation case, neither should this Court deprive a trial court of the opportunity to fulfill that responsibility after rejecting every factual basis for the trial court's decision aside from the recommendations of others.