Court Opinion

ID: 9633325
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 11:43:09.455233+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:16:26.688222
License: Public Domain

Shearing, J.,
concurring:
I agree with the reasoning and result in the majority opinion. However, I feel compelled to write a concurring opinion to respond to Justice Springer’s dissent.
Justice Springer states, “I do not understand fully what public policy or political agenda has brought about the plethora of parental terminations or why the State appears to these parted parents and their attorneys to be so intent on dissolving the families of the poor, powerless and handicapped.” In each case affirmed by this court, the parental rights were terminated because the parent or parents irrefutably demonstrated their inability to care for their children.
There is nothing arbitrary about a standard for termination that incorporates consideration of a parent’s acts and failures to act. Where a mother refuses to care for her son, voluntarily gives him to foster care, and then does not even bother to see the child for months on end even though she is in the same town, these acts should count against her. In the case of Recodo, she obviously displayed mixed feelings about her son by stating at various times that she wanted to relinquish her parental rights. Recodo took advantage of some of the assistance offered to her, such as parenting classes and therapy, but did not follow through on other assistance. It is true that Recodo was poor at the time of termination, but it appears she squandered several opportunities given to her to escape poverty. She was asked to leave school and three different jobs because she fought and/or made threats on the job. *152Recodo also threatened to blow up state offices and was indicted for bank fraud.
One may sympathize with Recodo for her personal problems, but the fact remains that, at the time of the hearing, she had left her son in the care of others for two years with only sporadic contact. Her three-year-old son also deserves some sympathy for the instability in his life due to his mother’s actions. He deserves a stable loving home and parents who are willing to provide him with care and guidance, which his mother is apparently unable or unwilling to supply.
Justice Springer accuses the State of taking children away from their parents just because the parents are handicapped. It may be true that some of the parents who have had their parental rights taken away were handicapped. However, it is not their handicap that is relevant to the decision to terminate their parental rights; it is their inability to care for their children. There are many thousands of parents with a variety of handicaps who are perfectly capable of taking care of their children and do so.
The State only intervenes when toddlers are discovered wandering the streets alone, or are repeatedly found with bruises and broken bones due to child abuse, or are abandoned without supervision and/or food. Even then, the parents have an opportunity to show that they are capable of caring for their children, and the State provides many types of assistance to the parents to enable them to do so. The State will pursue termination of parental rights only after the parents have demonstrated, during a period that is seldom less than two years, that they are unwilling or incapable of keeping their children safe and secure. There is not one iota of evidence that the State is simply plucking children out of poor homes and placing them in “more affluent” homes, which are “more pleasing to social service agents.” Rather, the evidence shows that the State attempts to place children with foster parents who are responsible, loving and caring, and my observation is that those who are willing and eager to adopt these already-troubled children demonstrate that they are indeed loving and caring. I have never observed that affluence is involved in any way!
Justice Springer seems to imply that in terminating parental rights, the State is passing moral judgment on the parents. That is not true. The State is only determining that the parents are incapable of keeping their children safe and secure. It may not be the parents’ fault that they are incapable of caring for their children, but fault is not the important or even relevant consideration.
Justice Springer perceives an “epidemic” of terminations. The negative term “epidemic” is inappropriate and connotes a sinister motive on behalf of the State. That the need for termina*153tion may arise more frequently than we would wish is indeed a misfortune, but the State is responding to the needs of the children, not creating the situations which place the children at risk. In reality, termination shows compassion to children by not condemning them to live with abusive and neglectful parents and thereby preventing their growing up to repeat the cycle of violence and neglect with their own children. The overwhelming majority of defendants who have appeared before me for sentencing were subject to abuse and neglect as children. By terminating parental rights in appropriate cases, I hope that we are in the process of breaking the pattern by providing safe, loving homes to the children who are tomorrow’s parents.