Court Opinion

ID: 9702504
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-25 23:14:16.989978+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:21:38.100302
License: Public Domain

Black, J.
(concurring). Upon manifestly careful deliberation, supported by an equally careful analysis of supporting evidence, Judge Bowles found that the best interests of Donna Potter require that she continue in present care and present environment. Such finding, confirmed here as it is, exhausts the appellate function and calls for affirmance.
There is no occasion for appraisal and judgment of the fitness or unfitness, as parent or custodian, of the appellant mother. The best interests of Donna are controlling regardless of such fitness or unfitness. Thus I perceive no reason for bolstering here, by a hypercritical “fitness” test of the mother, what Judge Bowles has decisively ascertained and we have confirmed.
The whole appellate ground has been concluded by 2 sentences appearing in the opinion of the former Chief Justice. They are:
“The primary matter at issue in the case is the welfare of the child Donna. All other questions raised must yield priority thereto.”
I concur in affirmance on such settled ground, and do not join in the gratuitous test of the appellant mother’s fitness for custody of Donna. The mother may be “fit” as a legal fiddle; yet she is not entitled to the child’s custody when the latter’s welfare die*650tates that’such custody,'for the present as .Judge Bowles has ruled, should remain where it is.
Souris, J., concurred with Black, J.