Court Opinion

ID: 9659865
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-23 21:56:21.604444+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:14:12.238873
License: Public Domain

*244Clinton, J.,
dissenting.
I respectfully dissent. First, the opinion recites that J oanne Tibbs is no longer in the home of the appellant. It was Joanne’s unsupervised presence in the home which constituted the danger to the children. Her absence removes the sole justifiable reason for absolute termination of the parental rights of the appellant. A parent’s right to the custody, care, companionship, and love of his or her childen ought not to be taken away simply because that spouse found it difficult to finally choose between his duty to his wife and his duty to his children. This court makes specific mention of Joanne’s testimony that Tibbs had thrown one of the children across the room. Tibbs absolutely denied this. That J oanne Tibbs was and is a badly mentally disturbed person, divorced from reality, is clearly evidenced by the reading of her testimony in the record. No credence whatever should be placed on such testimony.
Secondly, the opinion, at least by implication, denigrates the natural and fundamental right of a parent to his child and the right of a child to his parent. This case involves not mere custody, but absolute termination of the parent-child relationship. That relationship ought not to be lightly severed. A parent may, of course, by misconduct which jeopardizes the permanent welfare of the child, forfeit his right to custody or even in extreme cases to the parent-child relationship, but before a court takes such a drastic step a necessity must be extremely clear. I do not believe it is in this case.
One of the things we are sometimes inclined to forget is what may happen to such children when the parental relationship is terminated. Frequently they become mere wards of the state, inmates of institutions or foster homes, which in many cases cannot replace even a less than perfect parental relationship.
The statement in this case and in State v. Loomis, 195 Neb. 552, 239 N. W. 2d 266, that the right of the *245state iñ the welfare of the child is paramount to that of the parent, does not, I believe, conform to the philosophical and historical views which have prevailed in this country from the beginning. The natural rights of parent and child were, I am sure, considered so obvious and fundamental that no special mention of them in the Bill of Rights was thought to be required. The mutual rights of parent and child are, I believe, among those “retained by the people” under Amendment IX to the Constitution of the United States.