Court Opinion

ID: 9857056
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-24 07:13:25.872005+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:37:56.601472
License: Public Domain

BISTLINE, Justice,
concurring and dissenting.
I concur in the holding that the district judge properly modified the child custody provisions so as to award the mother custody of the children during the summer. The district judge also properly made provision that the father help support the children during that time.
I am unable to agree with the Court’s approval of a child support disposition which is related to the award of marital assets. Child support payments are for the benefit of the children, not the parents. I dissent from the Court’s approval of a lower court determination which allotted the wife the pittance of $1,500 as her share in the husband’s education, doing so not on the basis of the value of that asset, but rather on the basis that she would not be required to help support the children, but yet leaving open the possibility that she might yet be required to pay child support. It is an unjust bargain. Worse yet, it is a bad precedent. In no event should a trial court in the first instance, or this Court on appeal, ever make or approve a property determination which is intertwined with the parental obligations of support for minor children. The property disposition should be retried.
On one other aspect of this case, I feel constrained to remark, perhaps in the nature of a caveat. The magistrate here found:
III. . . . That both parties are fit and proper people to have the care, custody and control of said minor children of the parties.
IV. That both of the minor children of the parties are happy, well adjusted children. That the Plaintiff has had custody and control of the two minor children and that he has provided a comfortable, loving home for these children.
V. That it would be detrimental to the welfare and best interests of these two minor children to remove them from the established patterns and relationships which they have been accustomed to here in Boise, Idaho. That after comparing how each party would serve the welfare and best interests of these minor children, the evidence shows that the children’s best interest and welfare will be served by having custody remain in the Plaintiff. (Emphasis supplied.)
Obviously, the trial court, on finding both the father and mother suitable for assuming custody, proceeded to favor the father because he had had their custody, from which then flowed the belief that it would be detrimental to change the children’s routine and environment. This is not an acceptable factor in reaching a trial court *661award of child custody. It places that issue in the posture of being treated as a proceeding for the modification of custody. In a modification proceeding, custody has already been once placed in issue, fully litigated, and decided; the party seeking a modification carries the very difficult burden of establishing a change in circumstances, which change has taken place since the prior adjudication. Such a burden cannot fairly be placed on a parent who, on entering into a separation or divorce litigation, in the interests of children, acquiesces in the other parent assuming temporary custody. Creating such an advantage in one parent over the other, as this proposition tends to do, can only lead to intensifying the hostility attendant to court battles over custody. Who are the ultimate losers? The innocent children, of course.
Henceforth, fathers and mothers deserving of custody, who on separation would ordinarily voluntarily move to other quarters while the divorce action is processed through the courts, must recognize the consequences; a voluntary surrender of temporary custody to the other parent is not only going to prejudice a claim for custody, but place them at the exact disadvantage which attends a parent seeking modification. It has never been that way, and I am both surprised and startled to see the Court approve of such a procedure. Custody hereafter will have to be battled out at the preliminary stages of the divorce proceeding, and it can only result in exacerbation of controversies which, absent immediate direct confrontations, might work themselves out.
The issue of custody should be retried with directions that the prior custody of one parent, either voluntarily or by court order in summary proceedings, is not a proper consideration in making the final determination at trial. It is at trial that both parties should properly present the evidence which supports their respective contentions. The contrary rule approved today will work no benefit whatever to the minor children involved in parental disputes.
The mother here will be disappointed that her fight for custody has progressed through three tiers of court without any consideration shown to her contention that she was the victim of a well-conceived plan for “turning her out” after 12 years of marriage — sans children, sans property, and with a pittance for supporting and educating her husband. A reading of the father’s testimony reveals that almost from the day of the marriage and the birth of the children, he found his wife to be an insufferable housewife, an incompetent mother, and a poor provider. He contrived to keep these thoughts to himself, however, until his degree was in hand, at which time he advised her that the marriage was over. The evidence is capable of being read as sustaining her contention. The magistrate might have concluded otherwise, and perhaps properly so, whereupon this Court would be bound by supported findings. Here, however, her contentions have received no recognition or discussion in the decisions of the courts below, nor in this Court. Such, taken with the improper weighting of temporary custody, clearly requires a retrial of the custody issue.
Finally, neither the trial court nor this Court has paid any heed to certain evidence in this case and the teaching of Thurman v. Thurman, 73 Idaho 122, 245 P.2d 810 (1952). Documentary evidence in the form of letters from the children to the mother strongly tends to establish that the father, having the unopposed opportunity, poisoned the susceptible minds of little children against their own mother. The letters speak for themselves.
Where shortly after the separation, the little girls wrote:
Dear Mommy,
I got a A on the test Daddy brout Home. I LOVE YOU!!!!!
God loves you too.
Love Mary Your Daughter Hi, Mommy
In School we’ve been learning how to write words, I can write my my name you see. Anne. I Love you a whole lot. I am having pop corn right now. I wish you were here with me. Today in Dubugue we had a good time.
*662a year later the following is the Valentine’s Day message the little girls sent their mother:
Hellow,
Why didn’t you send us our stuff. I am not very happy about daddy sending you money. I wish you wouldn’t make daddy send you the money because now we mite not get to go to the red wood forest or the ocean.
Love Mary and Anne
P.S. Even though we mite not get to go on vacation we want to stay with daddy. PPSS. We would rather have daddy than all the money in the world. Today is going to be a very happy Birthday for Mary because we came with Daddy.
The trial court apparently passed the letters off as insignificant, although on what basis I cannot see. In Thurman, in placing the children back with their mother, the Court spoke thus:
The acts and conduct of the custodial parent, resulting in the alienation of the love and affection which children naturally have for the other parent, is a vital and very serious detriment to the welfare of such children and is grounds for modification of the decree with respect to such custody.
A review of the entire record as to the evidence adduced at the hearing satisfies this Court that the father, together with his mother, has exerted great influence upon these youngsters in a very short period of time, through fear or otherwise, which is not for the best interest and welfare of the children, in that it has shaken their confidence in and their love and affection for their mother.
Id. at 128, 129, 245 P.2d at 814, 815. All of this is not to say that on the basis of these letters the trial court should have awarded custody to the mother. It is to say that if, as these letters tend to demonstrate, these little children were being influenced against their mother, all things were not equal. At the very least, the mother was entitled to know the consideration that this evidence was accorded by the trial court. As in Thurman, a party’s entire presentation may rest upon just such a single theory. Absent any explanation by the father as to how such letters were written by the little girls to their mother, and absent any excuse on his part for not having guided their susceptible minds in proper channels, I would hold the award of custody to the father is not sustained by but is contrary to the evidence.