Court Opinion

ID: 9769492
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 14:52:42.878742+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:31:04.647466
License: Public Domain

RICKHOFF, Justice,
concurring.
While I must concur in the majority opinion, I write separately to emphasize that our laws regarding the termination of parental rights wrongly allow a teen mother to make the monumental and irrevocable decision to relinquish her child without professional guidance or a meaningful opportunity to reflect on the decision.1
It is shocking that in our rush culture a teenager may check into a hospital; acknowledge she has not consulted any traditional life-guides such as family, friends, clergy, and counselors; deliver her newborn; and six hours later begin signing the documents that will end forever her legal parenthood. Although an affidavit of relinquishment cannot be signed before forty-eight hours after the child’s birth, see Tex. Fam.Code Ann. § 161.103(a)(1), there is apparently nothing to prevent adoption agency representatives from contacting a very young mother before this period has expired and having her sign preliminary documents in the anticipation that she will relinquish her child. An un-emancipated, unwed teenager’s signature is worthless in the commercial world, as this young mother discovered when the hospital sent home the bill, ending the secret just after it was made irrevocable. Yet if this same teenager decides to transfer a life to an adoption agency, that decision is irrevocable the moment the affidavit of relinquishment is signed. Compare id. § 161.103(e) (Vernon Supp.1998) (affidavit of relinquishment to Department of Protective and Regulatory Services or licensed child-placing agency is irrevocable), with id. § 161.1035 (Vernon Supp.1998) (effective September 1, 1997) (other affidavits of relinquishment revocable before the eleventh day after the affidavit was signed). Such an affidavit is the most important document anyone will confront. Surely, some waiting period should be required.2
*407Janie Bruno was alone but for the strangers who may have had agendas that precluded them from serving as impartial counselors regarding her irrevocable decision to relinquish her child. Surely, some form of objective counseling should be available.
Now the legislature and our courts rightly recognize that terminations and adoptions should be expeditious because childhood is brief. But we should also rethink our statutory waiting periods and make available some professional guidance to these very young mothers so that when we declare their relinquishments of parental rights irrevocable we are assured that mature reflection has preceded the decision.

. All know each newborn is an inestimable gift. Most know the natural mother is not always prepared, so this treasure is meant for the next outstanding couple on the adoption waiting list. Most want the transfer as quickly and permanently as possible because we value the best interest of the newborn first. Some know the lifetime cost to the young mother and how much courage she must muster during her pregnancy when she is making this decision. It is just too important, too decisive to be made in secret by the young without guidance. Adoption agencies, particularly for-profit ones, and their hospital fellow travelers, have a rather awesome responsibility to serve as a guide in this process. I believe they should be relieved of this task and it should pass to an independent agency that would provide professional guidance including all options, such as open adoptions.

. Even as the senior justice on this court with fifteen years experience as an associate professor at a law school, I am allowed three days to cancel a contract to purchase consumer goods *407signed at my home — a document that is far less important than the documents signed by Bruno and a setting that is far more comfortable than a hospital. See Tex. Bus. & Com.Code Ann. § 39.003 (Vernon Supp.1998).