Court Opinion

ID: 9740408
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 20:34:43.400836+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:24:18.116153
License: Public Domain

LEEDOM, J.
(dissenting). I concur with that part of the opinion that affirms the denial of the divorce. I cannot agree with the award of the custody of the children to the father in the absence of both a divorce and legal separation.
I seriously doubt the wisdom of the rule that permits a grant of custody under such circumstances. Apart from statutory authority the majority rule I believe to be contra. The California cases amply support the majority opinion of the court in the construction placed on our statutory provisions. I am not satisfied however that we should adopt the California construction. Our statutes seem, quite clearly to me, to grant the court authority as to custody only pending a divorce action, or if divorce is denied, then only when legal separation is granted.
Furthermore I seriously doubt if the record reveals evidence to support the circuit court’s findings as to child custody. In the first place there is no direct evidence that the parties to the action intend to live apart. Since the court denied divorce and did not provide for legal separation, the fair assumption might be that a reconciliation is indicated. The award of custody to the father would appear to be disruptive of such possible and highly favorable conclusion of the domestic differences here involved; and in my opinion granting exclusive control of children to one of two parents living in the matrimonial home is wholly foreign to our concept of the family unit.
I do not however rest my dissent on either of the foregoing' propositions. I dissent for the reason that the issue of child custody absent divorce and legal separation was never tried. Insofar as the record discloses this mother who certainly knew her divorce might be denied, had not the slightest notice or warning until the evidence was all taken *235and the trial judge’s mind made up, that the action she started could result in a denial of the divorce and the loss of her children. Notwithstanding the expression of views in the court’s opinion the issue of child custody, even in case the divorce should be granted, was deeply submerged in the issues arising over the divorce and was. clearly a secondary issue; and the issue as to custody without the divorce was wholly outside the contemplation of the parties and their counsel. The court’s decision in this case involving a mother’s right to her children, one being but two years old, seems incompatible with the high degree of protection this court set up for this same right in the case of In re Romero, 73 S. D. 564, 46 N.W.2d 108.
After the trial of this action had ended and the trial court had announced its decision, including the award of child custody to the father who up to that time had not asked for custody except if a divorce be granted, the respondent father was permitted to amend his answer to ask for custody absent the divorce. The opinion of the court rests in part on the proposition that at that time appellant’s counsel could have obtained permission to offer new evidence on the new issue thus raised by the amended answer. The precise reason why counsel did not choose that course does not appear in the record. Counsel may have been surprised or even annoyed at this novel procedure and hastily concluded the better course would be to appeal. Counsel may well have reached that conclusion after full consideration of the problem presented; or counsel may well have been of the opinion that a trial then o'f this new issue following closely and quite necessarily confused with the trial of the related issues in the divorce case, would be impractical. But whatever may have prompted appellant’s counsel to submit the mother’s case to the judgment of this court at that point, her substantive right to keep her children should not be affected in any degree by such procedural problem as this record presents. Her right is too precious -and important.
I would affirm as to the divorce and direct the circuit court to vacate that part of the judgment relating to child custody.