Court Opinion

ID: 9606857
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 02:53:22.539425+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:02:35.765085
License: Public Domain

Littlejohn, Justice
(dissenting) :
I respectfully dissent and would affirm the order of the lower court.
The majority opinion concludes that there has been no showing of a change of conditions between the time of the order of the Orangeburg County Court on June 24, 1974, and the time of the order of the Orangeburg Family Court on February 17, 1975. It is patent from the record that the order of June 24, 1974, did not involve a judicial determination of what was in the best interest of the child. Although the settlement and dismissal of the case between the husband and the wife took on the nature of a judicial decree, it was obviously a rather summary disposition of the case solely because of an agreement reached between the parties. In my view, only the judge of the Orangeburg County Family Court has inquired into the question of what is in the best interest of the child.
In my view, a change of circumstances between the times of the two orders has been shown by the evidence. At the time of the first order, the wife and husband were still married, with at least some possibility of reconciliation although they were living apart; she was suspected of adultery but the .same had not been adjudicated.
At the time of the second order, here on appeal, the charge of adultery had been proven,’ she was divorced 1 and had been guilty of much misconduct between the time of the first order and the second.
*361These changes warranted a reevaluation of what is in the best interest of the child.
I would affirm the order of the lower court.

 The marriage of the wife to her paramour was not a matter before the judge. That, too, brings about a change of circumstances.