Court Opinion

ID: 9539070
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 07:46:14.169396+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T14:58:25.716538
License: Public Domain

STEWART, Associate Chief Justice:
(concurring in result).
I concur in the result reached by the majority, but for a different reason. Section 1913(c) of Title 25 U.S.C. (1982), which is part of the Indian Child Welfare Act, states:
In any voluntary proceeding for termination of parental rights to, or adoptive placement of, an Indian child, the consent of the parent may be withdrawn for any reason at any time prior to the entry of a final decree of termination or adoption, as the case may be, and the child shall be returned to the parent.
In this case, Cecelia, the natural mother, consented in open court to Jeremiah’s adoption on May 30, 1980. Some two years later, on April 30, 1982, but before a judicial termination of her parental right or the entry of an adoption decree, she revoked her consent and requested that Jeremiah be returned to her. Despite the mandatory language of § 1913(c), the trial court did not order the child returned to its mother. Rather, the trial court, apparently sua sponte, converted the voluntary termination proceeding into an involuntary proceeding and awarded temporary custody of Jeremiah to the putative adoptive parents. Thereafter, the court granted the petition for adoption.
The ICWA does not provide that upon a natural parent’s revocation of his or her consent to adopt, a court may order that the child may be placed in temporary custody with someone other than the natural parent pending a determination of the natural parent’s fitness. Rather, it states that “the child shall be returned to the parent” upon revocation of consent. (Emphasis added.) The Navajo tribal court would have had exclusive jurisdiction, had Jeremiah been returned to his natural mother as mandated by the statute when the natural mother revoked her consent. The state trial court erred, therefore, in not ordering the- child returned to his mother or the tribe.
I do not concur in the majority opinion because I believe that the majority’s holding concerning Jeremiah’s domicile is incorrect. In my view, the trial court initially exercised jurisdiction over Jeremiah in a proper manner and, but for the effect of 25 U.S.C. § 1913(c), correctly concluded that Jeremiah’s domicile was in Utah, thereby *973making him subject to adoption. Furthermore, the Navajo tribe’s waiting two years after notice to make an appearance in the Utah court amounted to a waiver of the tribe’s rights.
The majority argues in footnote 7 that I assume that Cecelia could validly consent to the adoption and thereafter revoke that consent and that that assumption presupposes an absence of abandonment on her part. The authorities cited by the majority for the proposition that an abandonment precludes a valid consent to an adoption are not on point. At the time of both the consent and the revocation, no final decree of abandonment had been entered by the trial court. Under those circumstances, both the consent and the revocation were clearly valid for the legal effect that Cecelia intended. After the revocation of consent, the trial court in effect made the finding that Jeremiah had been abandoned.
Under the circumstances, the majority’s expansive employment of the preemption doctrine is not justified by the ICWA in this case. Certainly state courts must, and do, have jurisdiction over adoption proceedings of Indian children in some cases. Here, the tribe showed no interest in the child for over two years and the child’s parent had plainly abandoned him, as even the majority concedes. I do not believe that the trial court was without jurisdiction under those circumstances.