Court Opinion

ID: 9674332
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 04:26:52.460476+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:16:27.016079
License: Public Domain

MORGAN, Judge
(dissenting).
I respectfully dissent for two basic reasons: (1) The result reached in the principal opinion condones interference by one court in a proceeding then pending before another court of concurrent jurisdiction, reference the same subject-matter, which can only be disruptive of an orderly judicial process and result in the rather chaotic situation presented in the instant case; and (2) Such a result is not compelled by the existing law.
As suggested by Brady, J., in his dissenting opinion filed in the Court of Appeals: “. . .1 agree with relator that the majority opinion would allow the mere crossing of a county line by a minor to subject him to a possible new proceeding for a change of custody. The issue is not whether the court in the other county will have any less concern for the minor’s welfare. I agree the court’s concern will be presumed equal. The real issue is whether the minor is going to be made a helpless pawn when two or more courts of equal jurisdictional authority, both being con*75cerned in the same degree for the welfare of the minor, reach opposite conclusions.”
The principal opinion is bottomed on the assertion that the subject-matter before the Juvenile Court of the city was not the same as the subject-matter before the Juvenile -Court of the county. I believe this to be a false premise; and, if such is true, State ex rel. Grimstead v. Mueller, 361 Mo. 92, 233 S.W.2d 700, 702 (banc 1950), relied on in the principal opinion, calls for relator to prevail. The city court, after terminating the parental rights of the mother, could not and did not abandon the minor. § 211.031(1)(b), RSMo 1969, V.A.M.S. It retained jurisdiction of the then homeless child. § 211.041, RSMo 1969, V.A.M.S. For what purpose? As the record reflects, for the purpose of finding adoptive parents. In this task, the city court had the assistance of the recognized experience of relator. The court’s order, in part, provided: “. . . it is ordered, adjudged and decreed by the court that the legal custody of said R.K.J., a minor child, be and the same is hereby transferred from said B.J. to said Catholic Charities of St. Louis for the purpose of adoption . . . ” (Emphasis added.) After the contemplated selection of a prospective adoptive home by relator, acting under the supervision of the city court, the law would require a nine month waiting period of “legal” custody by such prospective adoptive parents. During this period, the continuing subject-matter of this cause was solely that of the adoptive process; and, I can not agree with the rationale followed in the principal opinion that adoption (as the subject-matter) first came into being when the petition was filed in the county.
I also agree with relator that: “If [the principal opinion] stands as a part of the laws of Missouri pertaining to adoptions and custody of minor children, any agency such as relator will be constrained to place its children within the jurisdictional limits of the particular juvenile court which has decreed it to have custody.” To me, such is not an idle threat but an admitted fact of life, and there is no logical reason to so limit the quest for suitable adoptive parents by relator or the many other agencies and governmental welfare offices working in the same area.
Having more than one court (of concurrent jurisdictions) dealing with the same subject-matter, i. e., an adoptive home for this minor, is not only undesirable but vio-lative of the well established principle prohibiting the same.