Court Opinion

ID: 9662191
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-23 23:02:20.570172+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:14:37.307822
License: Public Domain

George Rose Smith, Justice. This case involves the custody of two boys, Jeff and Eric Feight, who were respectively nine and seven years old when the appellee’s petition was filed in the court below. The principal appellants are the children’s paternal grandparents, who appeal from an order confirming the mother’s previously adjudicated right to the custody of her sons. The parents, Richard and Alice Gay Feight, were divorced in Arkansas in June, 1969, custody of the children then being in the mother. In September of that year the matter of custody was litigated in Arizona, where the parties were then living. The court awarded custody of the children to the mother and ordered the father to pay $100 a month for their support. Thereafter the mother moved with the children to Mason City, Iowa, where she obtained employment. Richard Feight, the father, still lives in Arizona and is actually a bystander in this dispute. In late December, 1971, the paternal grandparents, Merle Feight and his wife, went to Iowa and, with the mother’s permission, brought the two boys back to their farm in Conway county, Arkansas, for a stipulated one week’s visit. At the expiration of that week, however, the elder Feights went back on their agreement, by refusing to return the children to their mother. Some four months later the appellee filed the present habeas corpus action to recover the actual custody of her sons. The decree, as we have said, was in her favor. The chancellor was right, under either of the two settled principles that control a dispute of this kind. First, a judicial award of custody will not be modified unless it is shown that there are changed conditions which demonstrate that a modification of the decree will be to the best interest of the children. Wilkins v. Davis, 244 Ark. 304, 424 S.W. 2d 530 (1968); Keneipp v. Phillips, 210 Ark. 264, 196 S.W. 2d 220 (1946); Myers v. Myers, 207 Ark. 169, 179 S.W. 2d 865 (1944). Here there is no such showing. In fact, there is no proof at all of the conditions that existed when the Arizona court entered its order in 1969. In the present proceedings the appellants have proved nothing, essentially, except that the appellee is a strict disciplinarian in the matter of bringing up her sons. It is not shown, however, that she was not equally strict when custody was awarded to her in the first place. Consequently the necessary proof of changed conditions is wanting. Secondly, it is firmly settled that, as between a parent and a grandparent (or anyone else), the law awards custody to the parent unless he or she is incompetent or unfit to have the custody of the child. Keneipp v. Phillips, supra; Baker v. Durham, 95 Ark. 355, 129 S.W. 789 (1910). Thus the privotal issue here is the fitness of the appellee to have the care of her own sons. Even if the question of the appellee’s fitness were the only issue before us, we could not say that the chancellor was wrong in deciding the case as he did. All the evidence unfavorable to the appellee comes either from her own lips or, directly or indirectly, from the lips of her sons, who not only testified but also were quoted extensively by their grandparents. No witness except the mother and the two youngsters purported to have firsthand information about what went on while the boys were living with their mother in Iowa. We need not read very deeply between the lines in the record to understand why the two boys, after having been in the unlawful care of their grandparents for four months preceding the trial, preferred to remain there. They testified that their mother, who worked during the day, required them to make up their own beds, to scrub floors, to wash dishes, and to do their own laundry. Their mother punished them for failing to do their chores. They also complained about the food they were given, though we have our doubts about the ability of little children to pass upon the sufficiency of their diet. From the boys’ point of view, conditions upon their grandparents’ farm were ideal. They were apparently given no chores to perform. They had a Shetland pony, a television set, and free access to a radio. They could eat whenever, and apparently whatever, they wanted to. The only indication of discipline during the four months is a statement that the younger boy was spanked once with a switch. The appellee testified positively, without apology, that she is strict with her children. She gives them chores to perform and punishes them for misconduct. When the younger boy had a tantrum and refused to stop screaming she held his head under a water faucet for about ten seconds. There had been one or two previous incidents of the same kind. Upon another occasion, when Eric refused to do anything that he was required to do, she locked him in a basement room (which had a window) for about half an hour. The record does reflect one disinterested point of view. The appellee testified that her husband employed a lawyer to have “the social services department” investigate conditions in her home. In the appellee’s words, “they came at their leisure one evening to see my home and my situation and said they were very much impressed with the children, my home and myself. And offered to go to court for me if I had any trouble whatsoever in the future.” It is immaterial that the quoted testimony was hearsay, for no objection was made either to the appellee’s testimony or to that of the grandparents, whose evidence was almost entirely a narration of what the two children had told them. In conclusion, we should make it clear that it is not the courts’ responsibility to weigh this mother’s strictness against the grandparents’ permissiveness. Not even Solomon could make that decision with the assurance of being right. The only questions before us are whether the appellants have shown a change of conditions since the Arizona court entered its decree and whether the appellee is so unfit to bring up her own children that she "should be permanently deprived of their custody. We cannot say upon either issue that the chancellor’s decision is against the weight of the evidence. Affirmed. Harris, C. J., dissents.