Court Opinion

ID: 9551735
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 18:58:26.844674+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:24:27.826368
License: Public Domain

OPALA, Justice,
concurring:
The dispositive issue formed below by the evidence of the mother’s non-spousal union did not require that the trial court make a comparison — on moral grounds — of the natural parents’ relative fitness for custody award. Rather, the evidentiary posture called primarily for a full-scale judicial reassessment of the mother’s home as a fit milieu for the minors. Moral considerations need not be implicated in this analysis. If the cohabiting mate were the mother’s husband but the record showed that his presence had a disturbing effect on the children and on the various relationships within the mother’s household, my legal position with respect to the anatomy of the case would be the same.
In short, I view the father’s evidence as a sufficient probative foundation to challenge a full-scale judicial inquiry into the mother’s home environment. Based on this approach, I am constrained to conclude that there was error in the premature termination of the trial in this equity case. The mother should have been called upon to meet the father’s direct challenge to her household’s fitness as a milieu for raising minor children in that community.