Court Opinion

ID: 9694831
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-25 17:56:24.44487+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:20:05.702947
License: Public Domain

TATE, Justice ad hoc
(concurring).
I respectfully concur, based upon my present acceptance of the factual appreciation of the majority opinion that the parents of Shirley Rae Paul forfeited or abandoned their natural rights as her parents to their child’s custody.
In my opinion, however, the sole question is not (as suggested by argument of counsel) whether it would be to Shirley Rae’s better interest to remain with her aunt and uncle rather than her parents.
The right of a parent to his child existed before governments or other social institutions of mankind. This natural right proceeds from our Creator and exists independently of the state; the state (and particularly by a democratic government where rights not delegated thereto by the people are reserved to the people, U. S. Constitution, Amendment X, Art. 1, Section 15, La.Constitution of 1921, LSA) does not in my humble opinion possess the power to take away in favor of a stranger the God-given right of a parent to his child, in the absence of the parent’s forfeiture or abandonment of such right or of positive detriment to the child. Cf., State ex rel. Martin v. Garza, 217 La. 532, 46 So.2d 760; State ex rel. Martin v. Talbot, 161 La. 192, 108 So. 411.
Thus, in advance of a finding that the parents have abandoned their right to their daughter, I regard as of no legal consequence the testimony of the psychiatrist that the child would be happier with her aunt than with her mother, or the testimony that Shirley Rae’s baton-twirling activities would be disrupted by her return to the rural and more humble home of her parents (in which, perhaps, the less glamorous duties of learning kitchen chores awaited her), or even the rather heart-breaking testimony of the child’s own preference for her aunt and uncle and of her great unhappiness when she learned that her parents wished her to remain in their (and her) home.
Although there is some doubt as to whether the parents ever actually intended to really abandon their child to the aunt and uncle with whom she was left when the family was in desperate straits, for the present I can concur with the decree herein upon the understanding that the trial court and the majority found, as compared with a passive separation forced by circumstances and prolonged through the gratitude of the parents to the then childless couple for their help in the parents’ hour *593of need, an active neglect of their parental duties with regard to the child which could be considered a forfeiture or abandonment of their right to their little girl.