Court Opinion

ID: 9706882
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 01:54:17.148389+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:22:25.695407
License: Public Domain

SCHWELB, Associate Judge,
concurring in the judgment:
By holding, correctly in my view, that the guardian’s petition for termination of parental rights (TPR) should have been consolidated and tried together with the grandparents’ petition for adoption, the majority has mooted the question whether certain issues relating to the grandparents1 were correctly addressed or resolved when the trial court was proceeding on the TPR case alone. It is undisputed that the rights and qualifications of the grandparents will be properly before the court in the consolidated proceedings on remand. The question whether or not the trial judge, in the artificially isolated context of a TPR petition which was not joined with a related pending adoption proceeding, accorded too much weight to the concerns of the grandparents is now a purely academic one which will not affect the result of this case. Familiar notions of judicial restraint should counsel us not to expound upon issues which we do not have to reach. See Smith *90v. Smith, 310 A.2d 229, 231 (D.C.1991) (an issue is justiciable only “when the parties’ rights may be immediately affected by ... a judicial decision [resolving it].”
Moreover, trial judges can be expected in the future to order consolidation in situations of this kind. The questions to which my colleagues have devoted so much attention are therefore not only moot as to the parties before us, but also unlikely to arise again with respect to other litigants.
Since the majority has nevertheless chosen to address what I regard as moot issues, I too will put in my two cents’ worth. The purpose of the TPR proceeding was to render the child adoptable, and it makes little sense to me to decide the TPR case in splendid isolation from its practical consequences in terms of adoption. See, e.g., In re A.B.E., 564 A.2d 751, 756-57 (D.C.1989). If the same situation were to arise again, I would hope that a resourceful trial judge would do whatever he or she could to bring the adoption issue out of the shadows of pending future litigation into the sunlight of immediate plenary consideration, so that a decision so critical to the child’s future would not have to be made on the basis of only some of the facts.
But even if the judge were precluded, by the law of the case or other compelling reasons, from ordering consolidation, the paramount consideration, as my colleagues recognize, would remain the best interest of the child. In order to ascertain where that best interest lies, the decision-maker must be apprised of the “entire mosaic.” In re O.L., 584 A.2d 1230, 1233 (D.C.1990); In re S.K., 564 A.2d 1382, 1389 (D.C.1989). Specifically, the judge should have broad discretion to consider any evidence which may shed light on the question whether the termination of the mother’s parental rights will be in her daughter’s best interest, long-term as well as immediate.
If the grandparents have or may have an important role to play in their grandchild’s life, then their potential contribution must necessarily become a part of the judge’s calculus. To read our TPR statute, see D.C.Code § 16-2353(b) (1989), or even general language in the Constitution, see Appeal of H.R., 581 A.2d 1141, 1159-66 (D.C.1990) (concurring opinion), as placing doctrinal limitations on the exercise in the child’s interest of the judge’s discretion, seems to me to be in derogation of the beneficent legislative purpose. In the absence of plain statutory or constitutional language which compels us to do so, we should not inhibit the trial judge, acting as parens patriae and as the child’s protector, from considering any relevant information which may illuminate the practical consequences of the momentous decision he is called upon to make.
The stakes in this case are high. They embrace no less than the future of a little girl. The judge’s ultimate decision will have a profound effect on her life. While I cannot agree with every word the trial judge wrote or omitted, I think that his basic approach — to consider all of the practical ramifications of his decision — was the right one. Neither the Constitution nor our protective legislation should be read as impairing the judge’s authority to learn all that he can and do all that he can to protect his young ward.

. Actually, the child’s maternal grandmother and her husband.