Court Opinion

ID: 9518302
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 00:49:23.067154+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:28:14.867426
License: Public Domain

UHLENHOPP, Justice
(dissenting in part).
I concur in all of the court’s opinion except division IX, from which I dissent in part. I think the court should also address an additional question.
I. I agree that the court’s opinion should not apply to adoptions heretofore decreed. But I think the opinion should apply to adoptions which are hereafter decreed. Those adoptions are still open so that notice can be given, indeed, the adoption petition might not yet be filed. But the court holds that notice to a known father is not required if the mother has heretofore released the child for adoption. The facts may be that the mother heretofore released the child, but the child may not be placed in the adoptive home until a year from now and the adoption petition may not be filed for two years from now. I think the adopters should give notice to a known father in such a case the same as any other adopters must give notice. If we dispense with notice to known fathers in adoptions hereafter decreed, we do not give effect to In re Stanley, 405 U.S. 645, 92 S.Ct. 1208, 31 L.Ed.2d 551.
II. Although this case is moot the court has chosen, and rightly I think, to deal with the question of the necessity of notice to a putative father in adoption proceedings. Inevitably, situations will arise in which for some reason the adopters do not notify the child’s father although the father’s identity is known to the child’s mother — for example, when the mother misrepresents the father’s identity to the adopters. Since the court has gone as far as it has in the opinion, I think it should say something about those situations, especially since the court says in division VI that an “effective” adjudication cannot be made without notice to a known father.
If a father attacks an adoption decree on the ground of no notice to him, the adopters should be permitted to try to prove that the father did not have the care or provide for the wants of- the child — and the father, of course, should be permitted to rebut. If the adopters establish those facts, then the adoption decree should be held an effective adjudication notwithstanding the adopters did not give notice of the adoption proceeding to the father — the father’s consent was not necessary in the first place and he has now had his day in court on that issue.