Court Opinion

ID: 9612828
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 04:11:27.817455+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:03:23.297091
License: Public Domain

ORME, Judge
(concurring):
I concur fully in Judge Garff s opinion. I write separately to expand on the concern touched upon in the concluding paragraphs of that opinion.
At oral argument before this court, it became clear that appellant’s motive in seeking to have the child excused from court attendance was concern by the adoptive mother, with whom the child had lived since infancy, and her husband, the child’s biological father, that the child not be made aware at this time of the fact that “mom” was not in fact his biological mother. It was suggested that the trial court had perhaps not been sympathetic to this concern and, indeed, held the view that a child of nine years should be told the facts so as to understand the change in legal status which his adoption would bring about.
The statutes clearly require appearance of the child in court, Utah Code Ann. § 78-30-8 (1977), and also require the court to examine the child as part of its solemn obligation to determine whether the adoption would be in the child’s best interest. See Utah Code Ann. § 78-30-9 (1977). It does not, however, follow that the child must receive full and complete disclosure, at the court’s own instance, of the purpose of his attendance and the nature of the proceeding. In this case, it is the child’s father and de facto mother who best know the child and his particular psychological and emotional needs. It is the court’s business to view and question the child and decide whether adoption is best. However, in the case of children under the age of twelve,1 it is not the court’s business to handle such a private and potentially delicate matter in a way inconsistent with the wishes of the child’s family.
Although conventional and perhaps even learned wisdom2 holds that children should be told as soon as feasible that they were or are about to be adopted, decisions about the timing and extent of such disclosures are clearly ones for the family, and not the judicial system, to make.
So far as I am concerned, it would be an abuse of discretion for a trial court, in a case like the instant one, not to honor the family’s request that the nature and effect of the proceeding be obscured from the child. As the main opinion ably demonstrates, the purpose of the statute is to assure the court an opportunity to see that the child exists, to observe his general health and well-being, to ascertain that he is free from obvious physical abuse, and to interrogate the child as appropriate. Those objectives can be as readily served in the context of a low-key, in camera chat with *1182a nice person whom mommy and daddy know and who works down by the library” as in the formal and absolutely candid context which appellant fears.
JACKSON, J., concurs.

. Utah Code Ann. § 78-30-6 (1977) requires that children over the age of twelve years consent to their adoption. Obviously, such children must be told the facts, incident to giving their knowing and voluntary consent.

. "Letting your child grow up with the knowledge that he or she is adopted is not only the most open approach but also the least complicated." J. McNamara, The Adoption Adviser 150 (1975). "There really isn’t any need to labor the point that the adopted child must be told of his adoption as soon as he is old enough." L. Raymond, Adoption and After, 77 (1974).