Court Opinion

ID: 9733086
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 16:53:04.047257+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:26:38.299107
License: Public Domain

*833STONE, J.
I dissent:
I cannot agree that the order made by the trial court was erroneous. It is true, as pointed out in the main opinion, that petitioner did not bring the children into the State of California surreptitiously. It is apparent, however, that in getting the children into this state she did not act in good faith.
Petitioner prevailed upon the Washington court to modify the divorce decree by allowing the children to visit her in California during vacations. Upon the very first visitation, a matter of months after the modification, she caused this action to be filed in an attempt to completely nullify and vitiate the Washington custody decree. All of the allegations of petitioner’s complaint and those in the supporting affidavits, with one minor exception, allege facts which existed at the time petitioner obtained the modification of the custody provisions of the decree in the State of Washington. In my opinion, petitioner should have raised and presented those matters to the Washington court at the time she sought modification. The one exception to those facts which existed at the time of the modification is the statement in the affidavit of the daughter that “. . . within the last two weeks affiant’s said father, William Van Biezen, has stated that he no longer wanted her in the house and no longer wanted her to live with him in the future.” If true, this allegation does not indicate a threat to the welfare, health or safety of the minor children so imminent that their well-being would be jeopardized pending a hearing in the State of Washington.
It appears obvious from a reading of the complaint and the affidavits that petitioner concealed her true intentions when she secured the modification of the Washington decree. Her failure to present conditions then prevailing to the Washington court and her failure to allege the same facts she now alleges before the California court demonstrate that she maneuvered to get the children into California before applying for complete custody. She apparently hoped to find a more receptive court or possibly to have the matter heard some 2,000 miles away from the home of the father and his witnesses. Thus, petitioner circumvented and defied the jurisdiction of the Washington court just as effectively as though she had surreptitiously brought the children into California. On the face of it, it would appear that she deceitfully used the Washington court as a vehicle for depriving that court of jurisdiction and for nullifying its own decree.
I do not interpret the trial court’s order as flying in the *834face of the decisions of our Supreme Court cited in the majority opinion. I agree the cases hold that the welfare of children is paramount. But it is only in those instances where the welfare of children will be jeopardized unless action is taken immediately that the California courts assume jurisdiction, despite a custody decree rendered by a sister state having primary jurisdiction. In our case I cannot see that the facts pleaded show any immediate peril to the children, or that any condition is shown which differs appreciably from those that existed six months previously when petitioner sought only visitation rights. In my opinion, the facts of this case bring it within the rationale of Allen v. Superior Court, 194 Cal.App.2d 720 [15 Cal.Rptr. 286] wherein the court says, at page 729:
“In the instant case the other circumstances which are assigned as 'changed conditions’ namely, that petitioner is alleged to be not a fit and proper person, that he periodically drinks to excess, that he has no place to keep the boys other than in a house trailer, are all conditions which if true, must have been in existence prior to the time real party in interest departed from Montana. To allow her to litigate such conditions in this jurisdiction, would under the circumstances, be tantamount to recognizing a self-determined change of venue in a forum removed from the locale of witnesses.”
The disposition of the matter by the trial court appears to me to have been entirely proper under the circumstances. I would deny the writ.