Opinion ID: 2061218
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: the law of maine

Text: Having thus examined in extensive detail the respective natures of the habeas corpus and equity jurisdictions, in relation to infants and their custody and control, we turn now to analysis of the development of the law of Maine in the light of these separate and independent jurisdictions. Our starting point is the first reported case in Maine which deals with habeas corpus as to control of an infantState v. Smith, 6 Me. 462 (1830). It is to be emphasized that in 1830 the Supreme Judicial Court of Maine which decided State v. Smith lacked a full jurisdiction automatically carrying over from English Chancery. The court possessed only that limited equity jurisdiction explicitly conferred upon it by the Maine Legislature. In the year 1830, when State v. Smith was decided, the legislature had withheld from the court the equity powers relating to the control or custody of infants (as shown by R.S. of Me., 1841, c. 96, Sec. 10, which summarized the totality of the grant of equity powers from 1821 to 1841). The Supreme Judicial Court of Maine itself recognized this limitation of its jurisdiction when the court said in State v. Smith, in referring to some of the English Chancery decisions: These authorities are not cited as precedents for a common law court, but they do establish the fact that the right to control parental authority has been claimed and exercised by the appropriate court in England for more than a century. (pp. 464, 465) (emphasis supplied) The implication is apparent that the court was considering itself a common law court in dealing with the matter before it and was, therefore, citing Chancery cases merely to illustrate an equity jurisdiction which it, (as well as the common law courts of England) lacked but which the Chancery Courts of England possessed. In State v. Smith the father, as the statutes of Maine then permitted, had transferred the legal right to custody of his children to their mother, his wife, while he and his wife continued to live apart. The father's petition for habeas corpus thus failed because illegal restraint of the children was non-existent. This decision in State v. Smith is consistent with, and applies, the then established law that a petitioner for habeas corpus, in relation to the control of infants, who fails to show a pre-existing legal right to their custody, (absent a showing of actual force used to restrain the children), ipso facto fails to establish the element of illegal restraint which is indispensable to the functioning of habeas corpus. It is the presence of other language in State v. Smith, offered as an alternative approach, which has engendered extensions, more apparent than real, of the precise scope under Maine law of habeas corpus jurisdiction in relation to the control of infants. To the extent that the court in State v. Smith stated that under habeas corpus jurisdiction it is in the sound discretion of the court to alter the custody    or not (p. 468) the court must be deemed to have been referring only to a discretion to give the infant the privilege of being free to go as he pleases or to allow temporary physical possession of the infant to remain where it had been, leaving the legally entitled custodian to vindicate his right to physical possession of the infant through other remedies. Consistently with the then well-established law the court would be inaccurate were it claiming a power in habeas corpus to adjudicate changes in rights to custody or guardianship. As we have elucidated previously, the only valid significance which can be attached to the discretion mentioned by Lord Mansfield in Rex v. Delaval, or which appeared to have been utilized in Rex v. Smith, is a discretion of the court, once an illegal restraint of the infant appears, and even though the court lacks power to adjudicate a change in the right to custody or of guardianship, to decline to give an infant of tender years the privilege to go at will or to deliver physical possession of the infant to the legally entitled custodian. Furthermore, the comment in State v. Smith that the court will endeavor, as far as possible, to administer a conscientious parental duty with reference to   welfare of the infant [7] is an obvious reference to the parens patriae jurisdiction over infants which had been reposed, only and uniquely, in courts possessed of full Chancery powers. This point becomes abundantly clear from the fact that Judge Story himself in United States v. Green (the case from which the court was quoting) made his remarks relying upon statements of Lord Eldon in DeManneville v. DeManneville as to the powers of a Court of Chancery to exercise the authority of the king, as `parens patriae' (p. 486). We, therefore, now clarify State v. Smith as a decision that (1) habeas corpus in relation to the control of infants (who are being detained without actual force against them) must be brought by a person having a pre-existing legal right to the custody of the infantotherwise illegal restraint is missing and habeas corpus has no function to perform; and (2) because the father who sought the habeas corpus relief had lawfully transferred his right to the custody of the children, he had failed to establish an illegal restraint of the children upon which habeas corpus could operate to accomplish a release. The additional language contained in the opinion in State v. Smith is to be treated as expressions of dicta which refer to the power of those courts in which full equity jurisdiction reposes and which the court in State v. Smith lackedto alter the right to the custody of infants, predicated upon the welfare of the children. From the time of the decision of State v. Smith in 1830 no significant case dealing with habeas corpus in relation to control of infants appears in the Maine Reports until 1942 when Merchant v. Bussell, 139 Me. 118, 27 A.2d 816 (1942) was decided. During the interval there had been developments in the law of Maine relating to the custody and control of infants. After 1895 (P.L.1895, Ch. 43) the parents of children jointly have care and custody of the person of their minor children; and before 1942 there had been added the further prescription that: Neither parent has any right paramount to the rights of the other. P.L.1927, Ch. 78. Furthermore, if parents were living apart, as of 1942 the Probate Court had already been empowered to adjudicate rights to custody between the parents. (Later, in 1945 the Superior Court was given similar jurisdiction concurrent with the Probate Court. P.L.1945, Ch. 303). Finally, in 1874 the legislature had seen fit to confer upon the Supreme Judicial Court full equity jurisdiction according to the usage and practice of courts of equity in all    cases where there is not a plain, adequate and complete remedy at law such equity jurisdiction to be in addition to that conferred in the specific instances previously mentioned in the statutes. (P.L. 1874, Ch. 175). Commencing with 1930, the Superior Court had been granted full equity jurisdiction concurrently with the Supreme Judicial Court. (R.S.1930, Chapter 91, §§ 35, 36). [8] In Merchant v. Bussell a father petitioned for a writ of habeas corpus to regain the physical possession of his four year old daughter whom he had left with her maternal grandmother shortly after the child had been born and her mother had died in childbirth. It is clear that by virtue of the Maine statute, supra, (the mother having died), (as well as the common law), the father had the pre-existing legal right to the custody of the child. On the principle that the detention of the child away from him, the legally entitled custodian, was an illegal restraint because in contravention of the child's wish to return to him(a wish presumed to exist because of her legal obligation to return),the court in habeas corpus was under a duty to acknowledge the illegal restraint. At the same time, however, the court was free of obligation, as an incident of habeas corpus jurisdiction, to order that the physical possession of the child be delivered to the father. In Merchant v. Bussell, however, the court utilized its discretion in habeas corpus not merely to refrain from delivering physical possession of the child to the father but also to effect a change of the legal right to custody. The court justified such action by invoking parens patriae powers. In support of its authority to alter the legal right to custody, the court said:    courts act in this behalf solely upon the assertion of the right of the sovereign whose power they administer to continue or change the custody of the child at his discretion, as parens patriae,    (p. 121, 27 A.2d p. 819) (emphasis supplied) In view of the analysis previously developed, it is manifest that the court in Merchant v. Bussell had really transformed a proceeding which had been initiated to invoke habeas corpus jurisdiction into an equity proceeding. Only such explanation renders the case consistent with the indisputable proposition that parens patriae powers to change the right to the custody of infants had been reposed solely and uniquely in courts having full equity jurisdiction. Courts having common law habeas corpus powers, but lacking full equity jurisdiction, were without authority to utilize the powers of the sovereign as parens patriae. This technique employed in Merchant v. Bussell, of calling upon an equity jurisdiction to reach an ultimate decision of the case, was within the court's authority since, in 1942, as had been the situation since 1930, the Superior Court had been granted full equity jurisdiction. We interpret Merchant v. Bussell, therefore, insofar as it adjudicated a change of the legal right to the custody of the child in a proceeding which had originated as habeas corpus, as an election by the court to exercise equity jurisdiction rather than as an appropriate discharge of habeas corpus jurisdiction. We now reaffirm the common law that a court lacks power when an infant is produced before it under habeas corpus jurisdiction to adjudicate a change in the legal right to the custody of the child predicated upon the paramount consideration of the best interests of the child. Such change of the right to custody, in the absence of statute otherwise providing, may be accomplished only as an incident of equity jurisdiction in which the court is exercising a power passed from King to Chancellor and from Chancellor to a court upon which full equity jurisdiction has been conferred. Merchant v. Bussell thus stands for the following propositions: (1) a person who shows himself to have a pre-existing legal right to the custody of an infant properly invokes habeas corpus jurisdiction to seek to achieve the objective of the writ of habeas corpusa release of the infant from illegal restraint; (2) in the exercise of this habeas corpus jurisdiction the court lacks power to inject considerations of the best interests, or the general welfare of the child, to adjudicate changes in the legal right to custody, since in habeas corpus the court acts only to ascertain whether there is an illegal restraint of the child constituted (in the absence of actual force upon the child) by the child's being detained in contravention of the rights of the legally entitled custodian; (3) even though, however, the court in the exercise of the habeas corpus jursidiction is satisfied that the petitioner has established his legal right to custody and the resulting illegal restraint of the child, (constituted by the child's being withheld), the court, under habeas corpus jurisdiction, is free of a duty to deliver the physical possession of the child to the legally entitled custodian; (4) the court has a discretion, if an illegal restraint exists, to decide whether to put the child at liberty by giving the child privilege, or if the child be of tender years, or otherwise shown to be incapable of using sound judgment, the court may choose to deliver the temporary physical possession of the child to the legally entitled custodian, or to leave the physical possession as it was or deliver it to some other person, without, however, adjudicating any change in the legal rights to custody; and finally (5) if the habeas corpus proceedings have been properly instituted in the first instance by a person showing himself legally entitled to custody of the infant and the court happens to have, in addition to common law jurisdiction, full equity jurisdiction, the court has discretion, without obligation, to lay aside its habeas corpus powers and to bring into play its equity jurisdiction, acting as parens patriae, to evaluate the best interests of the child and to adjudicate, if appropriate, changes in the right to custody as an incident of the exercise of the equity jurisdiction. [9] In Merchant v. Bussell it was the court's ultimate resort to proposition (5) above the utilization, at its election, of the independent equity jurisdiction under which the court could act as parens patriae and make the welfare of the child, rather than the legal right of the parent, the paramount considerationwhich justifies the decision of the case. [10] The foregoing clarification of the decision in Merchant v. Bussell likewise applies to the subsequent habeas corpus cases relating to infants, of Stanley v. Penley et al., 142 Me. 78, 46 A.2d 710 (1946) and Blue v. Boisvert, 143 Me. 173, 57 A.2d 498 (1948). Stanley v. Penley is to be considered as holding that the father of a three and one-half year old son, as the person legally entitled to his custody (the mother having died), prevailed in habeas corpus because the Superior Court saw no circumstances inducing it to elect to exercise its equity jurisdiction as parens patriae and adjudicate a change of the legal right to custody. In the exercise of its habeas corpus jurisdiction to free the child from the illegal restraint, constituted by the child's being detained away from the person having the legal right to its custody, the court used its discretion, because the child was three and one-half years of age, to refrain from giving the child privilege to go at large and chose to deliver the physical possession of the child to his father, the rightful custodian. Blue v. Boisvert is to be interpreted as deciding that the writ of habeas corpus sought by the petitioners who alleged themselves to be the adoptive parents of the child and, as such, possessed of the legal right to the custody of the then eight year old boy, Robert Boisvert, was quashed because the proof established that the adoption was a nullity and thereby eliminated the legal right of the petitioners to custody this legal right to custody being an indispensable element to the proof of the illegal restraint of the child upon which alone habeas corpus can operate. [Also: In re David, Me., 256 A.2d 583 (1969).] The many statements of the opinion in Blue v. Boisvert as to the paramount interest of the child may be regarded as dicta which describe the equity jurisdiction of the Superior Court to act as parens patriaea jurisdiction which could have been invoked, in the exercise of discretion by the court below, even had the court below been correct in its holding that the adoption was valid. As the opinion states: The court [below] considered only the fact that the petitioners were the adoptive parents and that their right to custody was absolute because of the decree of adoption issued by the Probate Court. This was the ground on which the petitioners based their right to the custody of the minor in their petition praying for the issuance of the writ of habeas corpus.  (p. 184 of 143 Me., p. 504 of 57 A.2d) The dicta of the opinion, referring to the equity powers of the court to evaluate the best interests of the child as paramount, are to be taken as directed to the lower court's assumption that the power of the Superior Court had been exhausted once, as the lower court saw the matter, the petitioners' legal right to custody had been established by a valid adoption. The dicta describing the paramount interests of the child constitute a reminder that the court below had an equity jurisdiction as parens patriae, if it chose to utilize it, to consider the best interests of the child and to override the legal right to custody established by the petitioners for habeas corpus. [11] In the light of the foregoing exhaustive review of the law governing the respective separate and independent habeas corpus and equity jurisdictions relating to the control of infants, we now focus attention upon decision of the case at bar. The court below correctly dismissed the petition of the Roussels for writ of habeas corpus. The face of the petition reveals that Roussels lacked any pre-existing legal right to the custody of the child. In the absence of a showing of such pre-existing legal right there is missing the essential element (no force or violence toward the child being involved) upon which the habeas corpus jurisdiction of the Superior Court, in relation to the control of infants, can functionnamely, an illegal restraint of the child constituted by the detention of the child away from the person having the legal right to custody. [12] The correct dismissal of the petition for habeas corpus, in view of the posture of the pleadings in the case at bar, is insufficient, however, finally to resolve the issue concerning the best interests of the child and the claim of Roussels to be awarded the right to her custody. Roussels, in an abundance of caution, have wisely chosen to supplement their petition for habeas corpus by filing, additionally, a complaint as a part of which they present the same allegations as were contained in the petition for habeas corpus. In these allegations Roussels maintain that the best interests of the child demand that the court adjudicate their right to the legal custody of the child. This filing of a complaint addressed to the Superior Court constitutes a direct invocation of the Superior Court's original jurisdiction in equity. Such equity jurisdiction, as the prior discussion has established, is a jurisdiction of the court, derived from historically established Chancery usage, practice and power, to act on behalf of the sovereign as parens patriae and to adjudicate rights to the custody of infants guided by the paramount consideration of the dictates of the welfare of the child. [13] As Judge Cardozo recognized in Finlay v. Finlay, supra, the court under this equity jurisdiction    may act at the intervention or on the motion of a kinsman,    but equally he may act at the instance of any one else. (p. 626, of 148 N.E.) The Superior Court, therefore, by virtue of the statutory grant to it of full equity jurisdiction, according to the usage and practice of courts of equity,    where there is not a plain, adequate and complete remedy at law (14 M.R.S.A. § 6051, subsection 13) possesses the jurisdiction which Roussels have purported to invoke provided that (there being no specific legislative grant of equity power in relation to the custody of infants)it is correct, as Roussels allege, that they lack a plain, adequate and complete remedy at law. [14] Such allegation is sustained by the fact that their habeas corpus petition had been correctly dismissed because they lacked a pre-existing right to custody; and there is available to them nothing under specific statutory authorizations pertaining to the adjudication of rights to custody of minor children. We decide, therefore, that Roussels being without a plain, adequate and complete remedy at law are entitled to seek relief, by resort to the equity jurisdiction of the Superior Court, to have an adjudication of their right to the custody of the child in the light of the best interests of the infant, provided that Roussels have correctly initiated the proceeding to call such equity jurisdiction into play. In this connection we recognize that the reported cases in Maine reveal that rarely, if ever, has there been a direct undertaking to call upon the original equity jurisdiction of Maine courts, as it had been granted after 1874, in relation to the adjudication of the rights to custody of infants. Hence, we take this occasion to delineate the appropriate procedure to invoke, as well as the substantive principles controlling, the exercise of such equity jurisdiction. We believe that both the procedure and the substance have been clearly promulgated by Judge Cardozo, as the result of his analysis of leading English cases, in the New York case of Finlay v. Finlay, 240 N.Y. 429, 148 N.E. 624 (1925). Procedurally, It is not a remedy by suit. It is a remedy by petition. The distinction is implicit and fundamental alike in the genesis of the jurisdiction and in its subsequent development. (p. 626) (emphasis supplied) The remedy by action is    incongruous in principle. It is more than that, however; it is cumbrous, expensive, and dilatory in practice. There must be pleadings and notices of trial and crowded calendars and formal proofs. The remedy by petition is summary and cheap and swift. It comes to us established and consecrated by tradition and practice immemorial. (p. 626) (emphasis supplied) We agree with the decision in Finlay v. Finlay, based on procedural considerations, that the original equity jurisdiction to adjudicate changes in the rights to the custody of infants is improperly invoked by a complaint which initiates a plenary civil action. We are unwilling to displace it [the remedy by petition ] by a less efficient innovation. (p. 626) Under this holding as to the correct procedure, the filing of a complaint by which Roussels have commenced a plenary civil action is improper. The dismissal of this aspect of the complaint by the presiding Justice could be justified, therefore, solely on procedural grounds and regardless of other considerations. The present matter, however, has precipitated issues and is resulting in a decision which is enunciating principles which have been infrequently, if ever, sharply and completely delineated in the reported cases of this State. We choose, therefore, to decide the present case by disregarding that Roussels undertook to achieve relief in equity, to change the right of custody of an infant, by instituting a plenary civil action. (This leniency extended because of the unique circumstances of this case, we emphasize, is without significance as future precedent.) Treating the complaint as if it were, in part, a petition in equity seeking a change of the legal right to custody, we learn from the allegations and matters appearing on the face of the pleadings that the child had been away from the Roussels for a year and a half during which time there was a complete lack of contact and communication between Roussels and the child. It was after this unusually long separation that Roussels elected to seek the intervention of the equity jurisdiction of the Superior Court. This point becomes the critical basis upon which the ruling of the court below dismissing this aspect of the claims of Roussels, without hearing, is to be evaluated. In the discharge of his function to exercise an original equity jurisdiction relating to the custody of infants, the presiding Justice applies substantive principles which, as we have previously stated, are well formulated in Finlay v. Finlay, supra, as follows: The chancellor    does not proceed upon the theory that the petitioner,   , has a cause of action    against any one. He acts as parens patriae to do what is best for the interest of the child. He is to put himself in the position of a `wise, affectionate, and careful parent'   , and make provision for the child accordingly.    He is not adjudicating a controversy between adversary parties, to compose their private differences. He is not determining rights `as between a parent and a child,' or as between one parent and another.    He `interferes for the protection of infants, qua infants, by virtue of the prerogative which belongs to the Crown as parens patriae.'  (p. 626) (emphasis supplied) A single Justice who is asked to act as a wise, affectionate, and careful parent to do what is best for the interest of the child must be held to be invested with a broad discretion. Appellate review of his decision must be confined, therefore, to the question of whether the presiding Justice was guilty of error to the extent that he committed an abuse of his discretion. In the present case the fact alone that there had been a period of a year and a half during which arrangements for the child had been made by representatives of the Commissioner of Health and Welfare outside the home of Roussels and that Roussels had been entirely without contact or communication with the child during that period,(without allegations by Roussels to show that the child's mental, physical or emotional condition was known by them to have deteriorated, or otherwise to have become impaired, at the time of the commencement of the proceedings, or disclosing specific circumstances which had occurred during the interval of separation indicating a strong likelihood that the child was in danger of mental, physical or emotional harm,)constituted a sufficient justification for a conclusion by the presiding Justice, without need for hearing, that the best interests of the child would be served by leaving the existing situation untouched by judicial interference. [15] The presiding Justice acted without error in dismissing that aspect of the proceedings in which the Roussels sought the intervention of the original equity jurisdiction of the court, as parens patriae, to adjudicate that the legal right to custody of the child should be awarded to them. Other theories of Roussels promulgated in their complaint and which are founded on the length of time in which Roussels participated in the foster-home placement program with reference to the child in question, lack support in reason or authority. The claims that the mere passage of time, of four and one half years during which the Roussels had the child under the foster-home placement program, creates an estoppel depriving the legally entitled custodian of legal rights, or furnishes a basis for an implied contract of adoption, are startling and unjustified enlargements of any recognized legal principles of which this court is aware. The attempt of Roussels to predicate estoppel and implied contract on the mere passage of timewithout accompanying allegations that the defendant Commissioner made promises to them or otherwise acted by affirmative conduct to induce them to believe that they were being given potential rights to custody or adoption upon which they had explicitly relied to their detrimentrepresents a departure from, and unreasonable extension of, any legal theory of estoppel in pais or of promissory estoppel which has come to our attention. Counsel for Roussels has failed to provide us with any authority having the slightest tendency to support these contentions. We hold them to be without merit. Likewise novel and lacking the support of direct authority or strong analogy, as well as potentially disastrous in their practical consequences, are the contentions of Roussells that the length of time during which they participated in the State's foster-home placement program as to the child in question conferred upon them (or the child), ipso facto, legal rights of a level sufficient to bring them within the coverage of minimal procedural due process requirements or of the equal protection of the laws or of the protection of civil liberties guaranties. No authorities cited by Roussels, or any which have come to our attention, come close to suggesting the existence of such legal rights on the bases asserted by Roussels. The unreported Connecticut case decided in the United States District Court in 1969 and cited in the brief of RousselsJames v. McLinden et al. [16] is inapposite. This decision holds only that when the State has yet to acquire the legal right to the custody of a child and has instituted a legal proceeding to be awarded the legal right of custody, a person who has acted toward the child in loco parentis has sufficient relationship to the child to participate in the hearing. This proposition is a far cry, indeed, from the contention of Roussels in the present case that even though the State already possesses the legal right to the custody of the child and has placed the child, as a ward of the State, under a foster-home placement program, Roussels, because they have been participants in the foster-home placement program with relation to the child, must be afforded a judicial hearing before the State may, acting without force, fraud or trespass, assert and act upon its legal rights as the child's legal custodian and guardian. The requirement of a judicial hearing as asserted by Roussels is thus without support in any decided cases which have come to our attention. We see nothing in reason or policy to suggest its approval. We reject the argument in principle because it unreasonably impairs the freedom of action which must be reposed in any person legally entitled to the custody of a child and who acts toward the child without violence under the authority of legal rights to custody or of guardianship. We can see no justification for creating the potential jeopardy to the efficient administration of the carefully devised foster-home placement program of the State which inheres in the contention that judicial hearings must be afforded foster-parents, who have had a child for a substantial period of time, before the State may exercise its legal rights, as it deems appropriate, to remove the ward from the foster home to place it in another foster home or to make such other arrangements for the welfare of the child while the State is and remains the legal custodian, or guardian, of the infant. Should there be instances, rare in practice we feel confident but possible in conception, in which arbitrary administrative practices might endanger the welfare of any ward of the State, we believe that the existence of the court's equity jurisdiction, as carefully delineated in this opinion, and which protects children against abuse in the exercise of parental as well as custodial or guardianship authority, is a sufficient safeguard. The entry must be: Appeal denied. MARDEN, J., sat at argument, but retired before the decision was rendered. POMEROY, J., did not sit.