Court Opinion

ID: 9701762
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-25 22:37:15.698328+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:09:10.856670
License: Public Domain

SPAETH, Judge:
This is a child custody case. John and James LaRue were born on January 2, 1971. They lived with their mother, Joanne, until July 12, 1971, when she signed an entrustment agreement placing them in the custody of the Allegheny County Child Welfare Services. On November 10, 1971, CWS placed the twins with Dove and Allie Harp. On January 17, 1975, Joanne LaRue revoked her entrustment agreement and notified CWS that she wanted the twins returned to her care. CWS responded by filing a petition under the Juvenile Act, Act of Dec. 6, 1972, P.L. 1464, No. 333, 11 Pa.C.S. § 50-101 et seq. (Supp.1976), alleging that the twins were “deprived” within the meaning of the Act. Following a hearing on March 5, 1975, the lower court ordered that CWS retain custody and continue placement of the twins with the Harps; the court continued the case for six months to afford it an opportunity to review its order. This appeal followed.
I
The fundamental principle, from which all other principles in custody cases derive, is that a child should grow up as part of its natural family. The role of the State is to do everything possible to ensure that the family will be strong ?md wholesome.
*223Thus, the Juvenile Act, 11 Pa.C.S. § 50-101 (b) provides:
(b) This act shall be interpreted and construed as to effectuate the following purposes:
(1) To preserve the unity of the family whenever possible and to provide for the care, protection, and wholesome mental and physical development of children coming within the provisions of this act;
(2) Consistent with the protection of the public interest, to remove from children committing delinquent acts the consequences of criminal behavior, and to substitute therefor a program of supervision, care and rehabilitation;
(3) To achieve the foregoing purposes in a family environment whenever possible, separating the child from parents only when necessary for his welfare or in the interests of public safety;
(4) To provide means through which the provisions of this act are executed and enforced and in which the parties are assured a fair hearing and their constitutional and other legal rights recognized and enforced. The primacy that this statement of purposes assigns to
the family reflects the emphasis we place on the individual. In our view, government does not exist for its own sake but to create and maintain a social order in which the abilities of every individual may be realized to their fullest extent. In such an order the family is one of the most important institutions. Within its shelter, more than anywhere else, we may find the love and security we all need.
Thus the courts have repeatedly acted to protect the family.
In Meyer v. Nebraska, 262 U.S. 390, 43 S.Ct. 625, 67 L.Ed. 1042 (1922), the issue was the validity of a state statute forbidding the teaching of a foreign language to any child who had not successfully finished the eighth *224grade. In holding the statute invalid, the Court said that parents have a right “within the liberty of the [Fourteenth] Amendment,” id. at 400, 43 S.Ct. at 627, to have their children instructed in a foreign language. Liberty, said Mr. Justice McReynolds,
denotes not merely freedom from bodily restraint but also the right of the individual to contract, to engage in any of the common occupations of life, to acquire useful knowledge, to marry, establish a home and bring up children to worship God according to the dictates of his own conscience, and generally to enjoy those privileges long recognized at common law as essential to the orderly pursuit of happiness by free men.
Id. at 399, 43 S.Ct. at 626.
In Pierce v. Society of Sisters, 268 U.S. 510, 45 S.Ct. 571, 69 L.Ed. 1070 (1924), the Court held invalid a state statute that required public school education of children aged eight to sixteen. The statute, said the Court,
unreasonably interferes with the liberty of parents and guardians to direct the upbringing and education of children under their control. .• . . The child is not the mere creature of the state; those who nurture him and direct his destiny have the right, coupled with the high duty, to recognize and prepare him for additional obligations.
Id. at 534-35, 45 S.Ct. at 573.
In Skinner v. Oklahoma, 316 U.S. 535, 541, 62 S.Ct. 1110, 1113, 86 L.Ed. 1655 (1942), the Court referred to marriage and procreation as among “the basic civil rights of man.” In Prince v. Massachusetts, 321 U.S. 158, 166, 64 S.Ct. 438, 442, 88 L.Ed. 645 (1944), it said that the care of children is within “the private realm of family life which the state cannot enter.” In Griswold v. Connecticut, 381 U.S. 479, 85 S.Ct. 1678, 14 L.Ed.2d 510 (1965), the Court held that an anticontraceptive statute *225violated the right of marital privacy, and in Loving v. Virginia, 388 U.S. 1, 87 S.Ct. 1817, 18 L.Ed.2d 1010 (1967), that a statute prohibiting interracial marriage was a denial of due process. In Roe v. Wade, 410 U.S. 113, 153, 93 S.Ct. 705, 727, 35 L.Ed.2d 147 (1973), the Court held a woman’s “right of privacy . . . broad enough to encompass [her] decision whether or not to terminate her pregnancy.” In Cleveland Bd. of Educ. v. LaFleur, 414 U.S. 632, 640, 94 S.Ct. 791, 796, 39 L.Ed.2d 52 (1974), it held that a regulation requiring a pregnant teacher to take early leave was invalid as “acting to penalize [her] for deciding to bear a child.”
None of this is to say that the State does not have any right to intrude upon the family. The conception of Roman law that the father is the sovereign of his family is gone — assuming we ever shared it. See generally E. Bodenheimer, Jurisprudence 18-19 (1974). Parents may not dispose of their children at will. The right to have and to raise children is coupled with a “high duty”. Pierce v. Society of Sisters, supra 268 U.S. at 535, 45 S.Ct. 571. Too often this duty is ignored. Instead of a shelter where love and security may be found, the family becomes a Hell. No one who has seen what parents sometimes do to children will think this language too strong. The Battered Child (R. Heller and C. Kempe eds. 1968); see also, V. Fontana, Somewhere a Child is Crying (1973); PLI, Effective Utilization of Psychiatric Evidence, ch. 5 (Criminal Law and Urban Problems 1970).
Thus arises one of the most difficult problems in the law. On the one hand, the State has an interest in requiring parents to respect the duty they owe their children. Roe v. Wade, supra. On the other hand, in requiring that respect, the State must be cautious not to intrude upon the family to the point of weakening it as one of our most important institutions.
The way to resolve this problem is to impose restraints upon the State, not to prevent its officials from reacting *226to a child’s plight, but to prevent them from overreacting. No doubt one official will be sensitive and wise, but another will be a self-righteous prig; and that is the one we must guard against, for backed by the State, his power may overwhelm any parent.
 Of such restraints upon the State, the most important is the principle that a child may not be taken from its parents except upon proof of “clear necessity.” In re: Adoption of R. I., 468 Pa. 287, 361 A.2d 294 (filed July 6, 1976); Stapleton v. Dauphin County Child Care Service, 228 Pa.Super. 371, 324 A.2d 562 (1974); Rinker Appeal, 180 Pa.Super. 143, 117 A.2d 780 (1955). In-the present case, the lower court ignored this principle. Instead, it decided the case as it would the usual custody case, where the question is whether the mother or father should have the child. That is to say, the court awarded the twins to the foster parents, and denied custody to their mother, because it found that that was in the twins’ “best interest.” Lower court slip opinion at 13.
This was error. “Best interest” is a much less exacting standard than “clear necessity.” “Best interest” is a general welfare standard. Thus, in deciding in the usual custody case whether the mother or father should have the child, the court will typically consider such matters as the size and location of the mother’s home as compared with the father’s, the mother’s character as compared with the father’s, the availability of educational and religious facilities, and the mother’s financial resources as compared with the father’s. To hold that the present case should be decided in this manner would destroy the primacy we have assigned the family, as seen both in the cases and the Juvenile Act. Accept “best interest” as the standard by which to decide whether a child may be taken from the family, and social workers and judges of strong religious convictions will disapprove of a family when the child does not attend Sunday School; other social workers and judges, because of a *227family’s social habits (the mother smokes marihuana; she lives with a man not her husband; the marriage is interracial); others, because of a family’s economic status (the family is on welfare; it lives in a trailer; the husband is constantly changing jobs). Should this be thought an overstatement, consider such cases as Commonwealth ex rel. Myers v. Myers, 468 Pa. 134, 360 A.2d 587 (1976), and Gunter v. Gunter, 240 Pa.Super. 382, 361 A.2d 307 (1976). And see Janet D. v. Carros, 240 Pa.Super. 291, 362 A.2d 1060 (1976).
This does not mean that in a given case the family in question might not merit disapproval; it might. However, that should not entitle a court to take away its child:
It is a serious matter for the long arm of the state to reach into a home and snatch a child from its mother. It is a power which a government dedicated to freedom for the individual should exercise with extreme care, and only where the evidence clearly establishes its necessity. .
The welfare of many children might be served by taking them from their homes and placing them in what the officials consider a better home. But the Juvenile Court Law [now the Juvenile Act] was not intended to provide a procedure to take the children of the poor and give them to the rich, nor to take the children of the illiterate and give them to the educated, nor to take the children of the crude and give them to the cultured, nor to take the children of the weak and sickly and give them to the strong and healthy.
Rinker Appeal, supra, 180 Pa.Super. at 148, 117 A.2d at 783.
It is to prevent such actions that our courts have insisted that a child may be taken from its parents only upon proof of “clear necessity,” and not upon proof of what may be in the child’s “best interest”.
*228II
The requirements that must be met before a child maybe taken from its parents, are clearly set forth in the Juvenile Act.
A
The proceeding to take a child from its family may commence in a variety of ways, as for example by a petition by a social welfare agency to have the child declared deprived, or by a petition for habeas corpus brought by the natural parents, or upon petition by the foster parents. See Stapleton v. Dauphin County Child Care Service, supra. Whatever the form of proceeding, however, the issue that the hearing judge must determine is whether the child is a “deprived” child within the meaning of the Juvenile Act.
In making this determination, the hearing judge is controlled by the provision of the Juvenile Act that a “deprived” child is one who:
(i) is without proper parental care or control, subsistence, education as required by law, or other care or control necessary for his physical, mental, or emotional health, or morals; or (ii) has been placed for care or adoption in violation of law; or (iii) has been abandoned by his parents, guardian, or other custodian; or (iv) is without a parent, guardian, or legal custodian; or (v) while subject to compulsory school attendance is habitually and without justification truant from school.
11 Pa.C.S. § 50-102(4).
The burden of proof should be on the party asking that the child be taken from its parents, and before the hearing judge may find the child deprived, the evidence must be “clear and convincing.” 11 Pa.C.S. § 50-320(c). Evidence should be received from all interested *229parties, and the child should be represented by counsel, for its interests may be distinct from any other party’s, Stapleton v. Dauphin County Child Care Service, supra. The judge should receive, and if necessary should seek out, evidence from objective, disinterested witnesses. Cf. Gunter v. Gunter, supra. His inquiry should be comprehensive and searching, and his conclusion as to whether the child is deprived should be supported by specific findings of fact and a full discussion of the evidence. Cf. Commonwealth ex rel. Grillo v. Shuster, 226 Pa.Super. 229, 312 A.2d 58 (1973).
B
Let us suppose the hearing judge decides that a child who has been entrusted to foster parents is deprived. He should then determine what “disposition [is] best suited to the protection and physical, mental, and moral welfare of the child.” 11 Pa.C.S. § 50-321. In making this determination, the judge should be guided by the legislative statement of purposes in the Juvenile Act. He should try “to provide for the care, protection, and wholesome mental and physical development” of the child, and at the same time he should try “ [t] o preserve the unity of the family whenever possible.” 11 Pa.C.S. § 50-101.
In a given case it may be that the attainment of these objectives will involve making a choice. Thus it may appear that to provide for the wholesome development of the child, the child should be taken from its family. If the hearing judge is led by the evidence to consider such a choice, he must act within the limits imposed both by the legislature, “separating the child from parents only when necessary,” 11 Pa.C.S. § 50-101 (b) (3), and by the cases, only on proof of “clear necessity,” In re: Adoption of R. I., supra; Stapleton v. Dauphin County Child Care Service, supra; Rinker Appeal, supra.
*230In the present case it would not be surprising if on remand the hearing judge would find the twins deprived, and would be led by the evidence to believe that he must decide whether to take them from their mother. It is at this juncture that the factual history of the entrustment agreement might be particularly pertinent.
Both the possibility and the desirability of trying to “preserve the unity of the family” may be critically affected by the influence on the child, and also on its parents, of the passage of time. See the discussion in Gunter v. Gunter, supra. Many factors must be taken into account. Among them should be: the age and mental development of the child; the extent to which a relationship with its parents has been preserved, and the nature of that relationship; the extent to which a relationship with the child’s foster parents has been established, and the degree to which that relationship has become like that of a natural family.
In this regard, the hearing judge may have to appraise the significance of the entrustment agreement. Judge HOFFMAN correctly suggests that in the present case CWS appears to have exploited the entrustment agreement to separate rather than to preserve the family. (Indeed, it is just such conduct that led to the expression of distrust, in Part I of this opinion of officials who, acting in what they perceive to be a child’s “best interest,” would take a child from its parents.) The judge should learn why the parents signed the entrustment agreement, and whether they understood what the consequences might be. The judge should also learn the manner in which the agreement has been administered. Questions such as these should be asked: Was there resort to the agreement because of pressing need, or because of the parents’ disinterest in raising their child? While the child was entrusted to another, what efforts were made — by all concerned — to encourage and help the parents to resume, or to start, raising their child?
*231Such inquiry will enable the hearing judge to learn how much vitality the. natural family retains; that determined, he may come to a surer decision on whether he should require the attempt to raise the child within the family, or entrust its care to someone else.
One cannot pretend that it will be easy to determine how much vitality the family retains. It may be done, however, if the hearing judge will always bear in mind the reason our law requires him to try to preserve the family. It is not to preserve a mere social form, or a convention from the past, but to provide our children a place of shelter and love, so that they may grow in freedom and strength. The measure of a family’s vitality is its ability to perform this function.
Some of the questions a hearing judge should ask have already been suggested. Stated more generally, his inquiry should be to determine the source of the difficulties of the family whose child is before him. Do the family’s difficulties come from within? Do the parents understand their “high duty” to their children? Can they be helped to understand? If they understand, do they have the personal resources to act upon their understanding? Or do the family’s difficulties come from without ? Has the family been overwhelmed by sickness ? By economic problems? What are the chances of helping the family overcome such difficulties?
By adopting such an approach, the hearing judge may reasonably expect some degree of success in his difficult task. In one case, the judge may find that the natural family retains enough vitality to require the attempt to preserve it, in another, that as the child’s personal history has evolved, it neither has nor can expect to have a natural family able to afford it the security and love it needs.
C
Let us next suppose the hearing judge finds that a child who has been entrusted to foster parents is not de*232prived. Then what should the judge do? In approaching this question, it will be convenient first to examine the lower court’s answer, as disclosed by its opinion.
1
The lower court said that it was unable to decide whether the twins were deprived
since a finding of deprivation is a “present finding” and cannot relate to the past or [be] projected to the future. The children are in a good home, doing well, and under no construction of the term deprived can this court find them deprived.
Slip opinion of lower court at 7.
This was error. The question before the lower court was not whether the child was “in a good home, doing well,” but whether the child was a “deprived child” within one of the definitions of the Juvenile Act. As has been discussed, a fundamental purpose of the Act is “[t]o preserve the unity of the family whenever possible.” 11 Pa.C.S. § 50-101 (b). The definitions of a “deprived child” are consistent with this purpose. Thus a child may be “in a good home, doing well,” but if that home is not the home of the child’s parents, the possibility may nevertheless arise that the child is “deprived.”
[1.0] For example: if the child “has been abandoned by his parents,” 11 Pa.C.S. § 50-102(4) (iii), or “has been placed for care or adoption in violation of law,” 11 Pa.C.S. § 50-102(4) (ii), the fact that the child is in a good home, doing well, will not preclude, or even be relevant to, deciding whether the child is “deprived.”
To consider the case at hand: Here, the question before the lower court was whether the twins were “deprived” in that they “[were] without proper parental care or control, subsistence, education as required by law, or other care or control necessary for [their] physical, mental, or emotional health, or morals.” 11 Pa.C.S. § *23350-102(4) (i). This question was not made inapplicable, or unanswerable, simply by virtue of the fact that pursuant to an entrustment agreement the twins were in a good home, doing well.
In order to decide whether a child is one who “is without proper parental care or control,” the hearing judge must decide not only whether at this moment there is proper parental care or control. If that were all the judge had to decide, no child living with foster parents could ever be deprived; the reasoning would be that since the child was under the care of foster parents, it was “without” the care of its own parents. However, such a construction of the Juvenile Act would not only be strained but inconsistent with, and destructive of, the Act’s fundamental purpose of preserving the unity of the family. The question, “Is [the child] without proper parental care or control?”, includes two questions: “Is the child at this moment without proper parental care or control?”; and, if so, “Is such care or control immediately available?”
This is simply another illustration of the frequently encountered fact that to ask whether something is so may imply asking whether it may be made so. Consider the following two cases. First: The hearing judge finds that if he returns the child to the parents, the child will be beaten and starved. The judge may go on to find that the child “is without proper parental care,” and therefore “deprived.” In re: Dale Henry DeSavage, 241 Pa.Super. 174, 360 A.2d 237 (1976). In this regard, the lower court’s belief that it could not look to the future was mistaken; it may have to look to the future. Second: The child’s parents were hospitalized because of an automobile accident. While they were hospitalized, their child was, pursuant to an entrustment agreement, placed with foster parents. The parents now seek the return of their child. The hearing judge finds that if he returns the child to the parents, the child will be loved and nour*234ished. The judge may go on to find that although the child is without proper parental care, because it is with the foster, not natural, parents, nevertheless, proper parental care is immediately availoMe. The judge must then go on to find that the child is not “deprived.” For the judge to say that the child is “deprived” would be to say to the parents, “I know that if I give you your child, you will give it proper care; however, I’m not going to give you your child.” This would be an exercise of judicial power, not reason. To state the proposition in abstract terms: The court may take Action A (refuse return of child), provided that Condition Z (no proper parental care) exists. This means that A is justified only if Z exists as a fact independent of the court. The court may not justify A by itself creating Z.
2
The foregoing having been said, it is now possible to answer the question, what should the hearing judge do, if he finds that a child who has been entrusted to foster parents is not deprived ? 1
If the hearing judge finds that a child who has been entrusted to foster parents is not deprived, there can be no doubt as to what the judge must do: he must return the child to the parents. This conclusion is compelled by the statutory scheme of the Juvenile Act. As discussed in Parts I and II-A of this opinion, under the *235Act and also under the cases — a child may be separated from the parents only when both of two conditions are satisfied: there is “clear and convincing” evidence that the child is “deprived;” and there is proof of “clear necessity” for separating the child from the parents.2
Ill
Accordingly, the record is remanded with instructions that a new hearing be conducted consistent with this opinion. In addition, two further constraints are imposed: First, the hearing must be before another judge, who will come to the case fresh. And second, the hearing must proceed with utmost dispatch. If time heals, it also wounds. Final order must follow remand by no more than 90 days.
CERCONE, J., files a concurring opinion.
HOFFMAN, J., files a dissenting opinion.
PRICE, J., files a dissenting opinion in which VAN der VOORT, J., joins.

. Judge Hoffman says that “the Juvenile Act did not contemplate the use of entrustment agreements . . ..” Dissenting opinion in support of remand 244 Pa.Super. at 1287; also, 244 Pa.Super. at 1285. This seems very much like the lower court’s statement that if a child is in a “good [foster] home, doing well” no finding of deprivation can be made. However, in the opinion of a majority of this court, the Juvenile Act did contemplate the use of entrustment agreements. As just discussed at some length in the course of examining the opinion of the lower court, the Act’s definition of a “deprived child” includes both the case of a child with the parents and the case of a child who has been entrusted to foster parents. Since the Act is complete, it is not necessary “to fashion procedures and standards” not authorized by, and inconsistent with, the Act. Dissenting opinion in support of remand 244 Pa.Super. at 1287, 1288 n. 12.

. Judge Hoffman states that “[i]f the court determines that the child will not be deprived, then the court must determine whether there are, nevertheless, compelling reasons for continuing custody of the child with the foster parents.” Dissenting opinion in support of remand 244 Pa.Super. at 1281. However, there is no reason that the foster parents’ custody should be emphasized instead of the unity of the family, i. e., the natural parents’ custody. Nor is it apparent how “compelling reasons” differs from “clear necessity”.