Court Opinion

ID: 9565788
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 19:27:49.45811+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:19:53.345460
License: Public Domain

*566THOMAS, Justice,
concurring specially, with whom URBIGKIT, Justice, joins.
I recognize that D.M. has chosen to focus her appeal in this case upon a lack of jurisdiction in the juvenile court. Her effort is limited to a contention that the court never did acquire jurisdiction because the record was not sufficient to sustain the finding of neglect in the court’s initial order. The essential difficulty for me in accepting the position presented by D.M. is that, on May 27, 1988, D.M. entered into a Consent Decree that depended upon the existence of jurisdiction in the district court. This agreement on the part of D.M. was tantamount to an admission of child neglect sufficient to invoke the jurisdiction of the district court. While I recognize the rule that parties cannot consent to jurisdiction, I am satisfied that it is also possible for parties, by their actions in a case, to foreclose themselves from asserting a lack of jurisdiction.
I believe that all of these matters then merged into the Order Following Disposi-tional Hearing entered on November 2, 1989. That order encompasses these findings of fact:
“1. That the Minor Children have been adjudicated as neglected children and that the children are subject to the jurisdiction of this Court.
“2. That all reports requested by the Court have been received by the Court, submitted to the attorneys herein and reviewed by the parties.
“3. That the Minor Children’s school district of residency is Fremont County School District # 1, Lander, Fremont County, Wyoming.
“4. That the Fremont County Department of Public Assistance and Social Services used reasonable efforts to prevent or eliminate removal of the children from the home; and that the mental and moral welfare of the Minor Children demands that the Minor Children be removed from the home.
“5. That the best interests of the Minor Children would be served by removing the children from their home and that foster home placement is the least restrictive environment available and proper for the said Minor Children.”
I am convinced that matters such as this cannot be treated as static and frozen at any point in time. Once the jurisdiction of the juvenile court is invoked, then the matter proceeds as a continuing and dynamic situation. Consequently, the court, in making its Order Following Dispositional Hearing, was entitled to rely upon facts that had developed during the entire course of the proceeding. The majority opinion does not consider any of this additional information in addressing the sufficiency of the evidence to sustain the findings of the district court. I am satisfied that the evidence supports those findings of fact and that the court properly considered all of that information in addressing the question of child neglect and in making the order that it entered. It well may be that the language chosen by the court with respect to the issue of neglect is not artful, but that does not avoid the manifestations of neglect that this record encompasses.
It is to be hoped that this family may at some point be reunited, but there was no error in the disposition that the trial court made. D.M. is estopped from attacking the jurisdiction of the court, and all aspects of the rest of the case leading to the ultimate disposition are justified by what occurred during the course of the proceedings in the trial court.