Court Opinion

ID: 9567820
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 19:58:09.885865+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T10:20:44.832479
License: Public Domain

WORKMAN, Chief Justice,
dissenting:
(Filed Dec. 17, 1993)
The majority agrees with the result achieved in the lower court; therefore, it goes to great lengths to justify the legal foundations upon which the decision of the lower court was apparently based.
It may be that modification is in order, but the evidence before the circuit court was entirely inadequate and did not support a change of custody under the standard previously enunciated by this Court.
Legally, this case is extremely uncomplicated. Any change of child custody should be based upon the very simple but sound standard expressed in syllabus point 2 of Cloud v. Cloud, 161 W.Va. 45, 239 S.E.2d 669 (1977), as recognized by the majority. That syllabus point states that “[t]o justify a change of child custody, in addition to a change in circumstances of the parties, it must be shown that such change would materially promote the welfare of the child.” (emphasis added). Thus, that syllabus point, like most of our other decisions regarding children and their custody makes the interests and welfare of .the children the chief consideration. There was scant evidence taken by the lower court on this issue as required by Cloud, and there was no real analysis of the issue in the majority’s opinion. Furthermore, the Court seemed substantially more concerned about the instability of the mother’s domestic life1 than the father’s, although the evidence reflected that the father was rarely available to the children due to his active social and work life.
What got lost in the shuffle was any real examination of the relationship of each party to the children, and any real consideration of their emotional needs.
The lower court, and this Court by tacit approval, relied primarily on the recalcitrance of the mother in accommodating her former husband’s visitation rights. The mother was less than cooperative in affording the father his visitation rights. This is a serious matter, not only from the perspective of non-custodial parent’s rights, but also from the perspective of the right of a child to a continued relationship with his non-custodial parent.2 There are other remedies for such non-cooperation, especially when there is not a long track record of it. Recalcitrance in permitting visitation does not in and of itself justify a finding that the best interests of the children would be served by changing their custody.
What was so incredibly absent from those proceedings was any evidence of what level of emotional bond the children had with each parent.
The evidence submitted in connection with the appeal indicated that the children enjoyed a strong emotional bond with their mother and were doing well educationally *583and emotionally. The psychological evaluation done subsequent to the evidentiary proceedings and the school reports reflect basically well-adjusted children who were happy with their mother. While it would certainly be unfair to base a custody decision on a psychological report in which the father did not have an opportunity to participate, this was the kind of evidence that should have been presented by both sides and considered by the lower court.
For far too long, courts (historically habituated by well-meaning men over fifty who come from an era where the father did little of the nurturing of children) have treated child custody disputes in almost every context as competing sets of adults’ rights, with little real consideration of the emotional needs and wants of the children.
It is not suggested here that young children be required to express preferences, as that usually only aggravates children’s already-divided loyalties and torn emotions. But rather than examining parents in a good guy-bad guy analytical framework (since in so many of these cases, there are no good guys or bad guys), courts should look at the emotional lives of the children. Who do they cry for at night when they are sick? Who do they want to run to when there’s happy news to share? In short, with whom are the children most closely bonded?
The scanty evidentiary record before us was manifestly inadequate to demonstrate that a change of custody would materially promote the welfare of the children. Thus, neither the legal nor human standard was met to make such an immense and dramatic change in the lives of these little boys. This case should have been remanded for the taking of evidence on their best interests.

. The lower court cited its concern that the mother had been married three times, and as to her "relationship with Mr. Ayers.” Testimony revealed that Mr. Ayers is a man whom the mother had met through her church and had been dating. There was no evidence that she and Mr. Ayers had had sexual relations in the presence of the children and no evidence of any harmful effect of this relationship upon the children. We emphasized in Judith R. v. Hey, 185 W.Va. 117, 405 S.E.2d 447 (1990), that such relationship does not raise any presumption against continued custody of the parent originally awarded custody.

. Family law masters and circuit judges routinely afford noncustodial parents (usually fathers) grossly inadequate visitation rights. It is difficult to maintain a significant relationship with a child a parent sees only every other weekend, which seems to be the standard court-ordered visitation. As a circuit judge, I felt strongly that noncustodial parents (and their children) were shortchanged when orders of visitation were not fashioned to build a continued relationship between the two. As a Supreme Court Justice, I have spoken before the Judicial Association urging judges to implement visitation schedules designed to accomplish this goal. Children of divorce are obviously far better off if they can continue a relationship-with both parents.