Court Opinion

ID: 9711584
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 04:35:02.201068+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:23:06.166420
License: Public Domain

Mr. JUSTICE HEIPLE, dissenting: I cannot agree with the result reached by the majority. The record here solidly supports the trial court’s finding that Daniel Hofer was unfit due to “failure to maintain a reasonable degree of interest, concern, or responsibility as to the child’s welfare.” The error of the majority is that they view the issue to be one requiring a showing of mere interest in the child. Even so, the record provides only the most meager evidence of such a general interest. However, such standard is at once too broad and too flimsy. The trial court properly noted that with respect to “interest,” “concern,” or “responsibility,” the focus is not the child in a general sense. Rather, what is statutorily required is interest, concern, or responsibility in the child’s welfare. The importance of financial support in demonstrating concern for a child’s welfare is clear. The welfare of a child necessarily includes the purchasing of hospital and medical services for pre- and post-natal care, food, clothing, and shelter. These can only be purchased with money. Hofer’s sparse financial contribution to secure his daughter’s healthy birth and the mere necessities of life clearly demonstrates his unfitness. The majority notes that the welfare of the child never suffered from lack of support by Hofer. This is due to the fact that both mother and daughter were welfare recipients for a period of time. Fortuitously, the maternal grandparents were financially able to pay most of the expenses attendant with the child’s birth. While Hofer’s income was very low at this time, within a year or so it increased to $300 gross income per week. During the two-year period that his income remained at this level, he made no contributions of support to secure his child’s welfare. Although Hofer was under no court order to provide support, this does not vitiate the statutory standard for parental unfitness. A father should not have to be told that he should support his child. With the rights of fatherhood, so go the duties. While Hofer exhibited “interest in the child” by reason of his early sporadic efforts to visit her and the delivery of a card and gift on one birthday, something substantially more is required to show interest, concern, or responsibility for her welfare. The child was born out of wedlock to two 16-year-old parents on February 21, 1976. As the majority opinion notes, from September 1978, to the date of filing of the adoption petition on December 4, 1979, Hofer neither visited or provided support for the child. Hofer did not fulfill his parental duty of support, interest, and concern and should therefore be barred from exercising his parental rights. For these reasons I believe the trial court’s finding of Hofer’s unfitness was correct. I would affirm the judgment in favor of the adoptive parents, they being the natural mother and her husband. The natural father has forfeited his rights of visitation.