Court Opinion

ID: 9702645
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-25 23:20:04.753223+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:21:40.172483
License: Public Domain

REILLY, Associate Judge
(dissenting).
In my view, reversal of the trial court in this case cannot be reconciled with leading decisions of this court in domestic relations matters. Until today, it had been our rule that unless the trial judge’s findings of fact lacked evidentiary support or a clear abuse of discretion was shown, his decree should not be disturbed.1 Obviously this is not the situation here, for (1) the subsidiary factual findings of the trial judge are not challenged, and (2) the reasons for his ultimate conclusion are set forth in two learned and lucid opinions, amply supported by citations to judicial authority.
This court has repeatedly held that even on such major controversies as disputed custody of children, a trial judge’s disposition of the competing claims of divorced parents should be permitted to stand even though a reviewing court, or other trial judges, on the same record might well have reached a different result. Coles v. Coles, D.C.App., 204 A.2d 330 (1964). We strongly reaffirmed the principles enunciated in that opinion in a recent decision even though — in contradistinction to the case before us on appeal — no written findings were made by the trial judge. Dorsett v. Dorsett, D.C.App., 281 A.2d 290 (decided September 22, 1971.)
Dorsett was also a case where the trial judge decided that the father should be the guardian of a child of tender years *546despite a concession that the mother was not an unfit person and a general presumption that as between divorced parents the child is better off with the mother. In refusing to substitute our judgment for that of the trial court, we quoted with approval the observation of Chief Judge Hood in the Coles case.2
Since what has been termed the classic decision on the subject, Chapsky v. Wood, 26 Kan. 650 (1881), most jurisdictions, including this jurisdiction, have accepted Judge Brewer’s pronouncement that in child custody cases: “Above all things, the paramount consideration is, what will promote the welfare of the child ?” This principle is easily stated but its application in a particular case presents one of the heaviest burdens that can be placed on a trial judge. Out of a maze of conflicting testimony, usually including what one court called “a tolerable amount of perjury,” the judge must make a decision which will inevitably affect materially the future life of an innocent child. In making his decision the judge can obtain little help from precedents or general principles. Each case stands alone. After attempting to appraise and compare the personalities and capabilities of the two parents, the judge must endeavor to look into the future and decide that the child’s best interests will be served if committed to the custody of the father or mother. He starts with the premise, as did the trial judge here, that the best interests of the child would be served by living in a united home with the affection, companionship and care of both father and mother, but that possibility has been eliminated before the case reaches judge. So, the question for him is what is best for the child within the limitations presented. When the judge makes his decision, he has no assurance that his decision is the right one. He can only hope that he is right. He realizes that another equally able and conscientious judge might have arrived at a different decision on the same evidence. (Footnote omitted.)
In the instant case, the only matter raised on appeal concerns the surname to be used by children of divorced parents. Obviously such an issue pales in comparison with the problem posed to a trial judge by the selection of the particular divorced parent to whom the custody of a child should be entrusted. If the determination of such a question with all its serious and long range impact upon a child’s future properly rests at the discretion of the trial judge who has heard the testimony and appraised the character and personalities of the persons involved, it is difficult to justify the intrusion of an appellate body upon a trial judge’s disposition of a relatively trivial question.
Nevertheless, my colleagues hold that traditional deference in domestic relations cases to the judgment of the trial court is not warranted here because of an asserted failure on the part of the court below to evaluate the real issue. This, we are told, is not the question of whether there should be a name change from Pressman (the father’s name) to Nellis (the name of the second husband), but rather whether another change back to the father’s name is required, inasmuch as “for all practical purposes” the children’s surname was changed to Nellis at least five years ago.
Pointing to the leading case of Mark v. Kahn, 333 Mass. 517, 131 N.E.2d 758 (1956) (where a divorced wife was being sued for registering her children at school under the name of her new husband), they say that the trial court erred in deeming this case a precedent because one of the guidelines laid down by the Massachusetts Supreme Court in that decision was that the father, who is supporting the child, is entitled to the kind of relief granted below if he “without unreasonable delay objects to an attempted change of name”. According to the majority, the guidelines of the Massachusetts case were disregarded *547because the father here raised no timely objection until the name change had become “embedded” by five years or more of usage.
I cannot understand how this conclusion was reached for the record refutes any notion that appellee Pressman slept on his rights or was dilatory in any respect, once he learned the children were going under another name in Washington. Appellant never notified her former husband of the steps she had taken to bring about this situation and the record indicates that he was not aware of it until October 31, 1967. On that date he sent a letter to the lawyer who had negotiated the original custody agreement on behalf of the wife, warning that he considered this action a breach of their agreement.3 Not getting any satisfaction and being further aggrieved by what he deemed a denial of visitation rights, he then suspended making support payments directly to the wife, but deposited the money to the children’s account in a Pennsylvania bank.
The impasse continued and on June 17, 1968 he brought an action in the Court of General Sessions asking that permanent custody of the children be awarded to him (R. 326, 334). In this posture of the case it was scarcely necessary to put the mother on notice again that he was protesting her discontinuance of the use of his name by the children, for if he had succeeded in obtaining custody of them he obviously would have remedied the matter himself.
Thus it is incorrect to say that until the commencement of the trial on June 24, 1970 the surname issue was never directly raised. It was when the request for full custody was deleted from the complaint that the prayer was amended to request injunctive relief against the mother with respect to the name change. The lapse of an additional year and a half since that date has been entirely due to the success of the mother in obtaining a rehearing after the relief sought by the amended prayer was granted and the further time required to perfect her appeal. Except for a period of approximately a year when the application of the Nellis name to his children was unknown to him, the father, the mother has persisted in her course of action with full notice of her former husband’s legal challenge to it. Obviously the father should not be blamed for the law’s delay,4 nor should he be charged with permitting the name Nellis to become embedded in the children’s lives in the community for five years, when for four of those five years he has been taking all feasible legal steps to stop the practice.
Another guideline in Mark v. Kahn, supra, is that the kind of father entitled to relief should be one “who supports a child, manifests a continued interest in him, [and] is guilty of no serious misconduct * * Certainly the plaintiff in this case meets these criteria. It is conceded that his standing in his own community is good and that since the divorce the children’s holidays from school, and summer vacations, have been spent with him at his Pennsylvania home or his summer place in Atlantic City. So far as support is concerned, he has been more than generous. Having voluntarily entered into a post-divorce agreement to pay $100 a month per child, plus medical expenses, he has not appealed a decree of the lower court raising this amount to $400 monthly for the children and granting the wife $4,000 for legal expenses in the custody suit. The father is a man of moderate means; his total income before taxes being $20,600 in 1967, $15,600 in 1968, and $25,600 in 1969.
*548The majority opinion also seems to ignore another “essential test going to the child’s best interest” which was formulated in the Kahn case and summarized by the majority as follows:5
Children ought not to have another name foisted upon them until they reach an age when they are capable of making an intelligent choice in the matter of a name.
This is precisely what happened to the children here as a result of the mother’s actions when they were only age ten and five, respectively. The record makes it clear that it was the divorced wife, and not the children, who conceived and carried out the program for letting the children be known to their Washington acquaintances as Nellis rather than as Pressman, despite her denials on cross-examination that she had encouraged the children to use their stepfather’s name.6
According to the son’s testimony at the first hearing when he started to go to school in Washington (shortly after the mother’s remarriage), his mother expressed resentment because schoolmates would call and say, “Mrs. Pressman, is Adam there ?” She then suggested that he change his name to Adam Nellis,7 thus avoiding the necessity of having to explain why his name and his mother’s were different. Evidently the son was reluctant to go along, for he testified that the “first few times I said I didn’t want to” and it was not until he “thought about it a long time” that he acquiesced.8
In effectuating the daughter Amy’s change of name, the mother’s approach was even more direct. Amy’s first knowledge of the subject occurred when her teacher made such an announcement in the classroom of the school where Amy was a second grade pupil. She later learned that her mother had telephoned to say that she wanted her daughter’s name changed.9 Amy also testified that so far as she was personally concerned, the name by which she was called did not really matter.10 Also illustrative of the mother’s attitude with respect to allowing the children to maintain ties with the father is the fact that on the eve of this litigation, Amy had to “sneak out of the house” to post a letter to him.11 On one occasion the mother attempted to find some pretext for cutting short the children’s summer sojourn with him at Atlantic City, and on another occasion when the father was in Washington, she refused to let the children dine out with him.12
Q Let me ask you this, Amy. If you had your own way about it and didn’t have to do what somebody else told you to do, would you rather use the name Pressman than the name Nellis?
A I don’t really know. I don’t think it really matters, but I don’t think my name was changed legally.
Q You don’t think it was changed legally?
A I don’t know, but I don’t remember anything happening.
Q So you feel that your name is really still Pressman no matter what somebody might call you; is that right?
A Yes.
Q You don’t mind it being Pressman? You don’t mind being known as Pressman rather than Nellis?
A No, sir.
*549Such incidents not only suggest an explanation of why Amy’s attitude toward continued use of the Nellis surname shifted between the first and second trials, but also support the soundness of the trial court in applying to this case the Massachusetts doctrine that the “bond between a father and his children in circumstances like the present is tenuous at best and if their name is changed that bond may be weakened if not destroyed”.13
Moreover, some other aspects of the record persuade me that the trial judge’s decision was correct. Disapproval of his decree places a premium upon the use of extra-legal methods with respect to name changes. For if the majority opinion is correct in stating that the name change of the children had already occurred (*. e., from Pressman to Nellis) before the case reached the lower court, it also follows that the person responsible for this fait ac-compli — the mother — disregarded the only two methods prescribed by statute in this jurisdiction for acquiring a different surname.
One method would have been for the mother as “parent, guardian or next friend” to have filed an application in the Superior Court on behalf of the infants involved setting forth the reasons for the desired name change as provided in D.C.Code 1967, §§ 16-2501 to 16-2503 (Supp. IV, 1971). Another would have been for the stepfather, who is being held out in local circles as the natural father of the children, to have instituted adoption proceedings. D.C.Code 1967, § 16-301 ff., in which event the family name of the adoptees would have become that of the adopter under § 312(c) of that title.
If either legal course of action had been followed, the real father would have been entitled to appear in opposition to such petitions. Thus the prospect of judicial approval for either type of petition might well have been slim. This does not strike me, however, as justifying a party before us to reap the reward of conduct which flies in the face of public policy as set forth in acts of Congress.
Accordingly, I have some reservations about the majority insistence upon the total irrelevance to the issue of any consideration of which parent was at fault, although I agree with the view that in litigation of this sort, the welfare of the children is the paramount consideration. The written opinion of the trial judge, however, discloses that he was also guided by this very principle, for he expressly found that it was not necessary “for the best interest of the children” that they should be allowed a different surname.
Nevertheless, it must be remembered that the only litigants in this case are the divorced husband and wife — the children not being represented by a guardian ad litem or even a lawyer appointed to protect their interests.
So far as the impact of the lower court’s decision upon the children’s interest is concerned, it is apparent that the finding that Amy “would not be particularly disturbed should she be required to use her father’s name” is fully supported by the record. It is true that the son, Adam, strong objects to the trial court’s decree, but I am not persuaded that it is reversible error for a trial judge to reject the notion that the true interest of an adolescent of 15 is best served by letting him have his own way — particularly on an issue so important to proper filial attitudes as his present repudiation of the name of an affectionate father whose liberal financial support he seems quite willing to accept.
To be sure, his mother and the two professional witnesses retained by her predicted a calamitous effect on the boy unless the injunction were vacted, vis., (1) that his relationship with his blood father would be jeopardized, and (2) that he would suffer a loss of identity which would cause him embarrassment among his contempo*550raries. The sincerity of the first prediction — coming from the source it did— scarcely commands respect. Nor is the “identity” consideration a compelling one. It assumes that it is desirable to continue letting the boy live in a world of illusion rather than accepting the real fact of his heredity.

. Rutledge v. Harris, D.C.App., 263 A.2d 256 (1970), falls into the first category. There, a decree awarding the custody of children to a father was based upon a finding that “there is no evidence indicating that [he] is an unfit person.” That decree was indeed reversed by this court but on the ground that the record revealed “such factors as failure to support the children and previous parental indifference, possibly coupled with an ulterior motive to avoid support payments and gain the income from the social security payments * *

. Id., 204 A.2d 330 at 331-332.

. There can be little doubt that this letter was transmitted to the wife, for her own trial lawyer in this case produced it when the first husband was on the stand.

. At oral argument, appellee’s counsel said that it was through his own inadvertence and not Pressman’s that injunctive relief against use of the Nellis name was not included in the 1968 complaint. But as the suit was one for custody, such a request would have been surplusage.

. Mark v. Kalin, supra at 762.

. The trial court also found that “she had caused the children to be enrolled in schools and camps and the son to receive his Bar Mitzvah in said surname”, R. 356.

. Excerpt from proceedings of June 25, 1970, 3—4.

. Id. 20. Obviously the ante litem motam testimony of the children at the first trial where neither was on notice of the surname controversy is a vastly more trustworthy guide to the facts and their attitudes than their subsequent testimony.

. Id. 43-44.

. As Amy’s subsequent view of the matter is referred to in the opinion, the following excerpt from the transcript of the first trial is revealing (id. 44-15) :

. Id. 33-35, 53.

. Id. 24-25, 46, 26-28, 39.

. Mark v. Kahn, supra at 762.