Court Opinion

ID: 9550382
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 18:34:46.433137+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:21:28.604070
License: Public Domain

DOOLIN, Justice,
concurring in part, dissenting in part.
I concur with the majority, appellant has no standing to challenge the validity of Oklahoma’s problematical statutory scheme allowing adoption of an illegitimate child without the consent of the father.
I strenuously dissent to the majority’s affirming the trial court’s obdurate refusal to allow appellant to withdraw her consent to Amber’s adoption prior to any decree’s being issued.
A parent’s unfaltering consent to the adoption of her child, freely and understandingly given, is an absolute. Lacking such consent, an adoption is void. In Adoption of Robin, 571 P.2d 850 (Okl.1977) we renewed the judicial tenet that adoption statutes must be strictly construed in favor of a natural parent where the controversy is between the natural parent and persons seeking to destroy that status. The majority does not observe that tenet.
Section 60.10 was before this court in In re Adoption of Graves, 491 P.2d 136 (Okl.1971). There we discussed the portion of that statute providing “[t]he entry of the interlocutory or final decree of adoption renders any consent irrevocable”. We held this did not apply to withdrawal of consent on the basis of fraud. In the present case appellant testified to conversations wherein she was influenced to consent to the adoption by appellees by promises she could always see the child, and by vague references to actions of her stepmother to have the child taken from her. While this is not blatant fraud, any inducement to persuade a parent to consent to giving up her child is inherently coercive. These facts, although reason enough to allow appellant’s timely withdrawal of her consent, are outside § 60.10.
Within the perimeters of § 60.10 appellant also should prevail. Under this statute appellant’s consent was not irrevocable. Neither the interlocutory nor the final decree of adoption had been entered. Appellant withdrew her consent before any action had been taken in the adoption. At the time of appellant’s withdrawal of consent Amber was either her child, or no one’s child.
Stanley v. Illinois, 405 U.S. 645, 92 S.Ct. 1208, 31 L.Ed.2d 551 (1972) heralded the much cited constitutional principle that “[t]he rights to conceive and to raise one’s children have been deemed ‘essential’, Meyer v. Nebraska, 262 U.S. 390, 399, 43 S.Ct. 625, 626, 67 L.Ed. 1042 (1923), ‘basic civil rights of man,’ Skinner v. Oklahoma, 316 U.S. 535, 541, 62 S.Ct. 1110, 1113, 86 L.Ed. 1655 (1942), and ‘rights far more precious than property rights.’ ” During the interim period when Amber theoretically may belong to no one, the natural mother surely enjoys a superior position, based on this essential right. Appellees as prospective adoptive parents have no comparable claim to Amber. There is no constitutional right to adopt a child.
Under this statute the best interests of the child are controlling. The best interests of a child generally lie with her parent. This perdurable theory is not extinguished by the signing of a piece of paper, especially where it is admitted by investigatory personnel that the prospective adoptive parents *321may not be acceptable.1 How can this court hold Amber’s best interests will be served by placing her with strangers whose own fitness is shown to be in grave doubt by the evidence and who have no right to the adoption as against a natural parent?
The record evidences no material difference between care of child to be given by appellant or by appellees. There is no evidence Amber’s best interests would not be served by allowing appellant to withdraw her consent, or perhaps to adopt her own child.
This is not a divorce proceeding where both parties as parents have an equal right to custody. There, of course, trial court must make a “best interests” decision that is totally discretionary and oftentimes arbitrary. Neither is this a termination proceeding. There has been no showing appellant is unfit.
A parent should be permitted to withdraw her consent unless child’s best interests dictate otherwise. A recanted voluntary termination must not be the basis of an involuntary termination when consent is withdrawn before any decree of adoption is issued. Involuntary termination must follow statutory procedures.2
The trial court, upheld by the majority, has in effect terminated appellant’s parental rights without providing procedural due process through Oklahoma’s statutory scheme.
I am authorized to state that Justice WILLIAMS and Justice HODGES concur in the views herein expressed.

. Adoption was ordered on a probationary basis for six months so that appellees might work out their marital problems.

. 10 O.S.1978 Supp. § 1101 et seq.