Court Opinion

ID: 8294731
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2022-10-17 11:00:51.252418+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T16:43:59.366388
License: Public Domain

Justice HEARN.
Without hesitation, I join Justice Kittredge’s thoughtful, well-reasoned, and excellent dissent. Like Justice Kittredge, I view both the pertinent facts of this case — facts which emanate solely from Father’s conduct — and the legal principles underlying termination of parental rights and adoption as requiring judgment in favor of Adoptive Couple. My review of the record convinces me that Father turned his back on the joys and responsibilities of fatherhood at every turn. I would not minimize, as the majority does, the telling fact that Father told Mother in writing after Baby Girl’s birth that he would relinquish his parental rights rather than support her and Baby Girl, and I do not join the majority in accepting his laughable explanation that he did this as a way to convince Mother to marry him. In stark contrast to Father’s behavior in completely shirking his parental responsibilities, every action taken by Adoptive Couple since they learned she was going to be their child has demonstrated their deep and unconditional love and commitment to Baby Girl. Nevertheless, today, the majority goes out of its way to re-cast the facts in a light unfavorable to Adoptive Couple and overlooks Father’s clear course of conduct, affording him a second chance at fatherhood, all at great emotional cost to Baby Girl and Adoptive Couple.
Apart from the human tragedy that Father’s reluctance to act like a father until the eleventh hour has wrought on Baby *703Girl, Adoptive Couple, and their extended family, I profoundly disagree with the majority’s elevation of the Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA) to a position of total dominance over state law and settled principles of the best interests of the child, a position which I find totally unsupported by ICWA jurisprudence. As Justice Kittredge demonstrated, Father’s last-ditch efforts to embrace a relationship with his daughter under the cloud of litigation are far too little and much too late. I cannot fathom that Congress intended ICWA to require the return of a child to a parent who consistently, by his words and actions, evinced a desire to forego his responsibilities as a father. I therefore wholeheartedly join Justice Kittredge’s dissent and would order Baby Girl’s return to Adoptive Couple.
KITTREDGE, J., concurs.