Court Opinion

ID: 9749170
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-27 16:26:04.187593+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:25:44.623228
License: Public Domain

Horney, J.,
filed the following dissenting opinion.
I agree with the majority that the primary matter for courts to consider in the adoption of minors is the best interests of the child, but I do not agree that the adoption by strangers of the baby girl who is the subject of this unfortunate familial feud will inevitably be in her best interests. Rather the unusual circumstances of this case indicate that the natural father (who wants her) should have been permitted to adopt the child who, but for the callousness of the natural mother (who does not want her), would have been legitimated by the marriage of her parents. Neither the laws of God nor the laws of man forbid adoption by the natural father. The father has clearly demonstrated his love for the child by seeking her adoption. There was no finding, as the majority pointed out, that the father was unfit to rear the child. And, which is more important, the child, had she been allowed to become the adoptive daughter of her natural father, and despite his present unsettled plight, would have lived with and been provided for with care and affection by blood relatives—her paternal grandparents—who are undoubtedly also devoted to the child.
Nor do I agree, had the father been permitted to adopt his daughter, that she would have been “reared as an illegitimate child” for, had the adoption been granted, the child would in law have become a legitimate daughter. In that event the situation would have been the same had her parents married and her mother thereafter died. Had that happened—as in effect it did since the mother by giving up her parental rights and putting the child out for adoption has died at least so far as the child is concerned—the father would undoubtedly have taken the child to his parents, there being no impediment to hinder him, to be reared by them for the time being as the father had planned had his petition to adopt the child been granted.
I would reverse the decree denying adoption and remand for *98such further proceedings as might be necessary to safeguard the best interests of the child pending her eventual adoption by the natural father.