Opinion ID: 1854358
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 8

Heading: Avoiding the false dichotomy of parental rights versus a child's safety, well-being, and welfare.

Text: Justice Bolin's special concurrence appears to imply that the diligent protection of parental rights at some point comes at the detriment of a child's safety, well-being, and welfare, as though the two were mutually exclusive. I believe otherwise. In fact, I believe the best interests of a child are served by strengthening the state's acknowledgment of, and deference to, parental rights, because God has specially and uniquely equipped parents to raise their children so that any parent who possesses at least some love can care for his or her child better than the state, which by its nature cannot love. Consequently, the best interests of children are served by the state's declining to interfere with family government merely because its agents can, in individual cases, conceive of ways to improve the lot of a particular child. I believe what may particularly trouble some of my colleagues in this case is that this Court's current standard in Ex parte Terry, if faithfully applied, leads to an outcome they regard as unjust. Faced with upholding the standard and causing apparent injustice, or seeking justice at the cost of the standard, they have chosen the latter. Rather than directly acknowledge that our standard has been found wanting, however, they have honored it in form while gutting it in fact by following what I consider to be the lower court's subversion of the standard. Although such an approach may appear to help in an individual case, it will cause more hurt than help in the end, because the subversion of the language of the law inevitably undermines the authority of the law. There is a better way. If an existing court standard is found to hinder rather than promote justice as defined by a higher authority, we may, and should, refine or, if needed, even replace, our standard. And one way to do so in a custody case like this one is to distinguish between those parents who have established their right to noninterference by the courts by founding their own family governments through marriage and those parents who have not. Recognizing such a distinction clarifies and corrects our standards with respect to determinations of voluntary relinquishment and fitness. With respect to voluntarily relinquishment, natural parents who have founded family governments by marriage covenant should never be found by courts to have relinquished their custody or other parental rights apart from a definitive and unambiguous act such as a signed writing to that effect, as when children are given up by natural parents for adoption. Natural parents who have not founded their own family governments by marriage covenant, however, have not established their right of state noninterference and thus should be subject to something akin to a presumptive waiver standard. Under such a standard, implied by the main opinion and special concurrences in this case, a non-married natural parent's extended delay in fully asserting his or her parental rights may be treated as a waiver of those rights. Similarly, with respect to court adjudication of parental fitness, married parents, as founders of a family government, should be able to raise their children unfettered by state government interference, whether by court or agency action. As the Ex parte Terry clear and convincing standard will sometimes too easily permit state interference in the separate jurisdiction of family government, its application at most should be limited to narrow, defined areas, specifically: neglect to the point of actual abuse, tortious wrongdoing, or criminal acts on the part of parents. State involvement in these specific areas is permissible, because in these cases parents have acted improperly outside their jurisdiction and thereby subjected themselves to the state's sword of justice. Where an unwed natural parent has declined the separate jurisdictional protection afforded by marriage, by contrast, the courts should be free to apply the standard of review to any factor affecting fitness, as in the case before us. I believe refining our standards to distinguish between married parents and unwed parents in the manner specified above increases justice for parents and children alike while simultaneously acknowledging and honoring the separate governing jurisdiction of the family established by our Creator. Moreover, by returning to first principles, the refined standard also avoids the false dichotomy of choosing between upholding family government by judicial non-interference and protecting children by necessary and lawful court involvement.