Court Opinion

ID: 9641330
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 17:28:53.22309+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:10:36.684136
License: Public Domain

Larrow, J.
(Concurring). I fully concur with the views expressed by Mr. Justice Billings in the principal opinion. But I would again emphasize the statement of Mr. Justice Daley in In re J. M., 131 Vt. 604, 609, 313 A.2d 30 (1973) that separation of child from parent is required by statute to be “only when necessary for his welfare or in the interests of public safety”. 33 V.S.A. § 631(a)(3) (emphasis supplied). The power to terminate forever all parental rights, including as here the right to consent to an adoption, is indeed an “awesome power”. I do not read the statute as conferring it on the basis of an opinion formed by reading a treatise. Nor do I read it as legislating a general power to make whatever disposition of a child may be thought desirable to improve his state in life. I read the statute as providing temporary care for the abandoned, abused, deprived or uncontrollable child while the need for temporary care continues, and as envisioning total removal from a natural parent only in the light of the hopeless *486situation which the opinion describes as “stagnation”. The facts found here do not indicate such hopelessness, but rather a marked degree of improvement. The passage of time, standing alone, does not justify the order below, even though it may weaken the “psychological parent relationship”. Such specious logic would even serve to destroy the parental rights of a father in overseas military service. The “best interest of the child” is a useful maxim, but it comes into play only when there is legal justification for the permanent severing of parental rights.
The underlying philosophy of the trial court seems to have been that even though the natural mother was making valiant and fruitful efforts to regain her capacity to care for her children, their overall good would be promoted by adoption. I do not view the statute as trying to create the best possible world. I do not think it intends to set up a mechanism for transferring parental rights from those in temporary difficulty to those more affluent and adjudged by the social worker as more capable of educating and rearing the progeny, if not of procreating them. The result below does not accord with our social policy of bolstering the family unit, preserving it, where necessary, by financial and other support. There may well be a point where hope that the “biological parent” may resume her place with her family disappears, and severance of the last remaining ties is required. But it does not appear to be reached on the facts here found.