Court Opinion

ID: 9693578
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-25 16:50:33.432065+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:19:48.596642
License: Public Domain

TODD, Justice
(concurring specially).
While I have no specific objection to the result reached in the instant case, the facts as presented would appear to warrant a reconsideration of the standard retained by the majority opinion. An examination of the parent’s present fitness to function effectively as a parent was wholly proper in the distinguishable cases relied upon by the majority opinion; namely McDonald v. Copperud, 295 Minn. 440, 206 N.W.2d 551 (1973), and In re Petition of Eggert, 279 Minn. 31, 155 N.W.2d 454 (1967).
However, in unusual cases where a preliminary determination has been made that the natural father’s lack of physical, financial, or emotional conduct for a period of 5 years is “reprehensible,” that conduct should not be examined in the isolated context of that parent’s fitness to reassume the active role of parenting. Rather, at some point, the parent’s right to that legal status *34must be balanced with the right of a child to receive a positive benefit from the relationship.
The majority opinion illuminates many of the factors which may perhaps explain the natural father’s absence from the life of his child; however, the record does not fully explain the parent’s failure, after the remedy of many of the circumstances, to attempt to reestablish his relationship with his son. The record does support the conclusion that any professed interest in maintaining the legal status was only in response to judicial efforts of the child’s stepfather to assume that legal role.
It may well be that it is in the best interest of the child to establish a permanent relationship with his stepfather, a person with whom he has lived since 1971, whom he refers to as “Daddy” and to whom he has looked for his sole emotional and financial support during the period of his absence from his father.
The majority opinion seems to indicate that we are left with the choice of either retaining the present standard or abandoning it in favor of a new rule “which permits parental rights to be terminated whenever it is in the best interests of the child to do so.” Overriding policy and statutory considerations discussed by the majority do indeed appear to preclude that approach. Nonetheless, it would seem of optimum benefit to all parties to require the court to examine the statutory and decisional criteria in conjunction with the best interests of the child in extraordinary situations such as that presented herein. In that manner, the traditional concepts are not eroded, but are instead strengthened by that totality of the approach.