Court Opinion

ID: 9725219
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 11:35:21.040787+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:25:12.666543
License: Public Domain

*671Concurring Opinion
Achor, J.
I concur in the result reached in the opinion as written by Judge Arterburn.
As noted in that opinion, the statute in effect at the time of the adoption provided as follows, in part:
"§917 (812) Consent of parents — Proceedings as to inmates of house of refuge, etc. — 5. If the child is under twenty-one years of age, such court shall not adopt such child, if it have a father or mother living, unless such father or mother appears in open court and gives consent thereto, or unless such father or mother shall file with the clerk of the court his or her verified consent to such adoption;.. . ” Acts 1855, p. 122; as amended, Acts 1913, p. 408. Burns’ §917, 1926 Revision.
It is to be noted that the above cited statute uses the term father or mother in the disjunctive; therefore, under the statute it was only necessary that either the father or mother appear in open court and consent to the adoption, or that the father or mother file with the clerk his or her verified consent to such adoption.
The statute was obviously made to rest upon the presumption that the parent granting the consent would either act as agent for the other parent or independently of such other parent by virtue of some legal authority, such as the custody having been invested in such parent by a court decree.
The opportunity for controversy under the above statute is obvious. However, this was the law at the time of the adoption with which we are here concerned. The fact that the legislature so construed the act and considered its objectionable characteristic is made apparent by the fact that in 1941 and 1943 it amended the statute to provide, in part:
*672“If such child have .parent. or parents living, he, she or they shall consent in writing to such adoption.. . . . Acts 1943, ch, 40, §5, p. 89 [§3-120, Burns’ 1946 Repl.].
Thus, the act as amended, was made to provide that both parents, if living, must consent, in writing, to such adoption, unless the circumstances of the case are such as to bring it within one of the exceptions to the act, as thereafter provided. In this case, there is no contention that appellant’s mother, in consenting to her adoption, did not act within the authority of the then existing statute. The mother had been granted appellant’s care and custody in a divorce proceedings at the time of appellant’s infancy, and had continuously thereafter, to the time of the adoption seven years later, exercised the exclusive custody, care and control of her child, the appellant, to the time of her adoption.
Therefore, under the existing circumstances and the then controlling statute, the mother’s consent for the adoption of her child by her second husband — appellant’s stepfather — was all that was required, in order that the decree of adoption constitute a valid and subsisting judgment.
Myers, J., concurs.
Note. — Reported in 195 N. E. 2d 481.