Opinion ID: 2383520
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The Source of Discretion in Assigning Parental Rights is Equity

Text: The source of the principles that limit the court's discretion in parental rights determinations is venerable. The court's power derives from its general equity jurisdiction. Roussel v. State, 274 A.2d 909, 917-22 (Me. 1971). The King, as pater patriae, has the direction of infants, which charge is administered in his Court of Chancery. Id. at 918 (quoting DeManneville v. De-Manneville, 10 Vesey Jr's 52 (1804)). That was not a jurisdiction to determine rights as between a parent and a stranger, or as between a parent and a child. It was a paternal jurisdiction, a judicially administrative jurisdiction, in virtue of which the Chancery Court was to act on behalf of the Crown, as being the guardian of all infants, in place of a parent, and as if it were the parent of the child, thus superseding the natural guardianship of the parent. Roussel v. State, 274 A.2d at 918 (quoting The Queen v. Gyngall, 2 Q.B. 232 (1893)). The guardianship jurisdiction of Chancery, with all its old authority and bounded by its old principles, survives in the courts of Maine. In determining parental responsibility incident to its statutory divorce jurisdiction, [1] a Maine trial court applies these principles of equity under its full equitable jurisdiction. We find that the Legislature intended for courts in determining issues of custody in divorce proceedings to apply the equitably based principles which are applied to custody determinations made under the full equitable jurisdiction, (deriving from the English Court of Chancery) which was originally granted by the Legislature to the Supreme Judicial Court in 1874. Harmon v. Emerson, 425 A.2d at 984.