Court Opinion

ID: 9695964
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-25 18:32:14.398321+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:20:17.623359
License: Public Domain

Hammond, J.,
filed the following dissenting opinion, in which Henderson, J., concurred.
The immediate holding in the case does not impel me to dissent, nor would I have noted disagreement if the chancellor had given custody to the father and my colleagues had affirmed, because a disagreement as to the correctness of the result in a case rarely makes a dissent warranted or wise. I am constrained to note the reasons for my disagreement in this case because the opinion can mean only that, as a matter of law, no woman who commits adultery can ever thereafter be considered fit to have custody of her child, regardless of other conditions and circumstances, and I feel that this proposition is neither tenable nor defensible, whether considered as reflecting the mores and beliefs of the community, as a matter of morality, or as abstract law.
The majority decision builds a legal wall that can in fact neither be climbed nor breached between a mother who has committed adultery and her children. The only possible *362opening (if “the adulterous relationship has ceased and appears unlikely to be revived because the mother has changed her way of living, her past indiscretions may be overlooked, Oliver v. Oliver, supra”) has been closed, in operative effect, by the statement and holding of the opinion that the “usual rule against awarding custody to an adulterous mother” is not overcome “by the fact that she marries the paramour * * *. See Pangle v. Pangle, 134 Md. 166.”
That the decision in the case was—and could only have been—based on a presumption that adultery and subsequent marriage to the paramour in themselves make the mother unfit to have custody, without reference to whether the mother’s character, traits, habits, and abilities in fact constituted her able and likely to give the child the rearing and training that would make her custody in his best interests. The opinion says that the paramount consideration of the best interest and welfare of the child is to be tested by considering the fitness of the custodian, the age and sex of the child, the physical, spiritual and moral well-being of the child, and the environment and surroundings of the child. The majority point out that ordinarily a young child will remain with the mother and that brothers should not be separated. In the instant case all the factual and legal tests justifying custody in the mother are met, unless the adultery and the subsequent marriage alone nullify them.
The mother has had the boy for all of his seven years. He is a healthy, wholesome, happy and well-adjusted youngster. He is fond of his stepfather and his brother and they of him. His environment is completely satisfactory physically and otherwise. Two experienced and competent probation officers and the Director of the Probation Department, who have become personally familiar over a period of several years with the father, the elderly grandmother who will now have the child, the mother, the boy, his mother, his stepfather, and his teacher, think the child’s best interests lie in his custody with the mother. Fully weighing her weaknesses and failings, as did Judge Gontrum in making his own independent decision, based on the full and adequate facts and data supplied him, they found that the past misconduct would not *363in the future reflect on the children, that the mother would put the welfare of the children above everything else, and that the interests of the contested child would best be served if he remained with his mother.
All the facts and all the law say Judge Gontrum was right unless the adultery and the marriage to Fadely overcome every other consideration, and alone, as presumptions against fitness, (that were not shown to have created unfitness in fact) are decisive and controlling.
The majority opinion says that this Court must judge the future by the past and not gamble with the child’s welfare in the years to come. The past has seen the growth of a happy, well-adjusted, healthy child. Moreover, the equity court continually supervises the situation and can change custody if a change in conditions indicates that the child’s welfare requires it.
Mankind has made progress towards the exercise of the spirit of Christ when Fie said to the woman caught in the act of adultery: “Neither do I condemn thee, go and sin no more” (John 8:3-11). The days of the rule of public and private vengeance, when an adulteress was stoned or made to wear the scarlet letter A in the pillory, have passed. It has even progressed, I believe, since the time when this Court engaged in solemn and serious discussion as to whether a mother who had committed adultery should be permitted even to see her children. Hill v. Hill, 49 Md. 450; Kremelberg v. Kremelberg, 52 Md. 553. See 3 Westermark, The History of Human Marriage, 362.
It should have progressed to a point where the Court will not lay down a rule of law that in operative effect means (in spite of lip service as to possible exceptions) that a woman who commits adultery demonstrates her permanent unfitness for custody. The majority opinion, as I read it, will be an ever present warning to nisi prius judges that, in operation, it overrules Oliver v. Oliver, 217 Md. 222, and Trudeau v. Trudeau, 204 Md. 214, although professing not to do so, and forbids awards to a mother who has erred.
I do not suggest that adultery is a recommendation for fitness as custodian—in McCabe v. McCabe, 218 Md. 378, I *364concurred fully that the adulterous mother had shown character and traits that made her obviously unfit to have the daughter despite the fact that she had married the latest man. I say merely that the decision should be made by the trier of fact on the circumstances in relation to the individuals involved in each case, and that this on-the-spot determination, as a result of personal appraisal, should not be reversed on appeal unless clearly wrong on the facts, and never because of a presumption of error arising from the fact of adultery alone.
Particularly untenable is the philosophy of the opinion that the “mere fact” of the mother’s marriage to the paramour is not only of no persuasive force in showing fitness for custody, but actually compounds or adds to her unfitness. That this is the philosophy is revealed by the Court’s reliance on the point in Pangle v. Pangle, 134 Md. 166. That opinion said it was not just or right to humiliate the innocent party who has lost his spouse by requiring the surrender of the children to the “author of the marital misfortune.” What has this to do with best interests and welfare of the child? It is purely a facet of the vengeance theory. The wounded pride and lacerated feelings of the offended spouse are to be salved by the hurting of the offender in the taking away of the child. If this happens to coincide with the best interests of the child, no harm is done; if it does not, as often it will not, the cardinal and right rule of the child’s welfare as paramount is violated. Such reasoning, particularly where, as here, the new spouse had nothing to do with the marital break-up, seems to me to fly in the face of common sense. Certainly it is better for a couple to marry and in law be man and wife than to live together without benefit of clergy.
I think applicable the words of Sir Henry Duke, then President of the Probate, Divorce and Admiralty Division of the High Court of Justice, in Wilson v. Wilson, Prob. [1920] 20, in connection with a husband who had committed adultery with a friend of the family, “a respectable woman,” one Amelia Brown, who had come to take care of his children of a broken home. They had a child, and continued to live together as a family with all the children. The court granted *365him a divorce from his wife who had also committed adultery, and said: “I have come to the conclusion that on the whole
there are in this case circumstances which warrant the exercise of the judicial discretion in his favour. These are (1.) the position of the children to whose interest it is that they should have a home with the sanctions of decency and, so far as may be, of the law; (2.) the position of Amelia Brown, for it is clearly in her interest that she should be lawfully married; (3.) the case of the respondent, who long ceased to have any relations with the petitioner, and as to whom there is no prospect that my refusal of relief would have the effect of reconciling her to her husband; and, (4.) the case of the petitioner; it is in his interest that he should be able to marry and live respectably.”
I would affirm. Judge Henderson concurs with the views herein expressed.