Court Opinion

ID: 9735400
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 18:12:49.824748+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:26:57.987699
License: Public Domain

BURMAN, J., dissenting: Ten months after a decree was entered giving custody of their minor son to the father, a petition was filed by the mother to modify the decree and give her custody. In Wade v. Wade, 345 Ill. App. 170, 102 N.E. 2d 356, the court held that: “A decree fixing the custody of a child is final on the conditions then existing and should not be changed afterwards unless on altered conditions since the decree, or on material facts existing at the time of the decree but unknown to the court, and then only for the welfare of the child. Citing Thomas v. Thomas, 233 Ill. App. 488; Maupin v. Maupin, 339 Ill. App. 484, 90 N.E.2d 234; Liles v. Liles, 336 Ill. App. 159, 83 N.E.2d 35. The defendant admits that she was pregnant as a result of intercourse with her present husband and wanted a divorce before the child was born. She also knew that the plaintiff would get custody and that he was going to live at the present address with his father, grandparents and uncle and in a mixed neighborhood. The court could have found in the decree that the defendant was not a fit person to have custody of the child. The fact that the defendant has now a good home and now is a good woman does not give her the right to have custody of her son unless the welfare of the child requires it. Wade v. Wade, 345 Ill. App. 170, 102 N.E. 2d 356. There is no evidence that the plaintiff is unfit to have custody. New conditions must arise to warrant the court changing its prior custody determination. Stafford v. Stafford, 299 Ill. 438, 132 N.E. 452. At the present time the boy has his own bedroom. He was baptized a Catholic and goes to church every Sunday. He lives in an average working-class neighborhood. The defendant proposes to bring up the boy as a Catholic in the same home where she and her present husband are practicing the Protestant religion, and their daughter will be brought up as a Protestant. There should be unusual or peculiar circumstances to justify taking the custody of a son from the innocent parent and awarding him to one who admits being guilty of adultery. There is little reason to suppose that one who before conviction cared so little for her child as to commit adultery, an offense condemned alike by moral law and the law of the land, will so soon after conviction be as well qualified to rear and train him as the spouse who is found innocent of fault or offense. Nor is it just or reasonable to further injure and humiliate the innocent party to a marriage who has lost his wife through the criminal intimacies of the erring spouse with her present husband by also taking from him his only child. . The boy may later resent being brought up by a step-father who was the cause of breaking up his home. There must be the most impelling reason to modify the' decree and the record does not justify this drastic change.