Court Opinion

ID: 9547182
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 17:42:59.895944+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:17:25.473616
License: Public Domain

LANDAU, J.,
concurring.
I agree that the trial court erred in terminating father’s parental rights. I reach that conclusion on different grounds than does the majority, however. I express no opinion on whether it is in the best interests of the children to terminate on the facts in this record. I would hold instead that the trial court simply lacked authority even to entertain father’s motion to terminate his own parental rights. In my view, the statutes do not authorize such motions in the first place.
*42Although ORS 419B.500 is written, somewhat exasperatingly, in the passive voice (parental rights “may be terminated”), it is clear to me from the context of the statute that the legislature never contemplated that parents could bring an action to terminate their own parental rights. For example, ORS 419B.515 provides that a termination proceeding may be initiated “only after service of summons * * * on the parent or parents” The legislature obviously did not have in mind parents initiating a termination proceeding by serving themselves with summons.1 My examination of the sketchy legislative history of the statute, from its enactment in 1959 through amendments in 1963, 1973, 1979, 1985, 1987, 1989, and 1993, reveals no mention of the possibility that parents can initiate the termination of their own parental rights under ORS 419B.500.
I am aware that the state failed to raise this issue either at trial or on appeal. Nevertheless, I would not hesitate to address the matter. Parties may not, by waiver or by stipulation, confer authority on the courts that simply does not exist in the law. See Ragsdale v. Dept. of Rev., 312 Or 529, 541, 823 P2d 971 (1992) (“Stipulations of law affecting the public are not binding on the court.”). For example, in Parmele v. Mathews, 233 Or 616, 379 P2d 869 (1963), the parties failed to question the authority of a circuit court, acting as a probate court, to decide a matter of child custody. Sua sponte, the Supreme Court held that the circuit court lacked authority to make that decision, commenting that
“[a] judgment rendered in a court of competent jurisdiction upon a case which is not properly before the court is just as void as a judgment rendered upon a case before a court which has no jurisdiction to enter it.”
Id. at 625.
In this case, as in Parmele, although the trial court may have had subject matter jurisdiction, the termination proceeding was not properly before it. I would conclude therefore that the trial court lacked authority to entertain father’s motion to terminate his own parental rights and would *43reverse on that basis the trial court’s order granting the motion.

 In that regard, it is interesting to note that father served neither himself nor mother in this case.