Court Opinion

ID: 9733859
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 17:19:02.166819+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:28:36.380125
License: Public Domain

BROSKY, Judge,
concurring:
I concur in the result reached by the majority yet I feel compelled to write separately on the issue of our scope of review. There appears to be confusion among the cases in this regard. In custody matters we are supposedly granted *94review of “the broadest type” yet it has also been said that we cannot interfere with the custody decision of the trial court absent a gross abuse of discretion. In fact, the majority states this at p. 1165 of its opinion. To me the two statements seem contradictory and mutually exclusive of one another. However, I believe a workable statement of our scope of review can be gleaned from the relevant Supreme Court opinions on this matter.
A very astute articulation of the scope of review in custody cases was made by now Chief Justice Nix in Commonwealth ex rel. Spriggs v. Carson, 470 Pa. 290, 294-295, 368 A.2d 635, 637 (1977); there it was said:
It is now beyond dispute that the sole issue to be decided in a custody proceeding between contending parents is the best interest of the child ... In order to insure such a focus, our law has long recognized that the scope of review of an appellate court reviewing a custody matter is of the broadest type. Thus, an appellate court is not bound by deductions and inferences made by a trial court from the facts found, ... nor must a reviewing court accept a finding which has no competent evidence to support it. (citations omitted).
This statement appears to recognize a considerably broader scope of review in custody cases than is commonly enjoyed by appellate courts with respect to other matters. However, even this statement does not condone or authorize appellate courts to usurp the traditional function of a hearing court which is to make factual findings based upon the presentation of evidence. This key function remains within the province of the hearing court. But in a custody case the hearing court is charged with a duty to do more than make factual findings. It is also charged with a duty to order an appropriate custody arrangement in light of the factual findings made. It is this aspect, the ordered custody arrangement, which was apparently meant to be subjected to broad appellate review. This intent can be gleaned from the above quoted passage from Carson when con*95sidered with the language, quoted by Chief Justice Nix, which appeared immediately after that passage in Carson:
... [T]his broader power of review was never intended to mean that an appellate court is free to nullify the fact-finding function of the hearing judge. It is a principle which runs through all our cases that the credibility of witnesses and the weight to be given to their testimony by reason of their character, intelligence, and knowledge of the subject can best be determined by the judge before whom they appear.
Consequently, it appears to me that Carson instructs appellate courts to accept the factual determinations of the hearing court, unless unsupported by the evidence or made contrary to the weight of the evidence, a situation tantamount to an abuse of discretion on the hearing court’s part, but to scrutinize closely the hearing court’s custody determination which was made in light of the factual findings. Undoubtedly, it was meant that deference be given to a hearing court’s custody determination; and certainly with regard to matters of credibility of witnesses and resolution of factual matters and disputes, the hearing court is in a superior position to make such findings; but it also appears that custody matters were considered so important that an appellate court be given broad review rights to ensure that the child’s best interest would be served by an appropriate custody arrangement.
This delineation, that the appellate court cannot substitute its own factual findings for those of the hearing court, or otherwise usurp the hearing court’s role absent an abuse of discretion on the hearing court’s part, while still possessing a broad scope of review of the custody determination, is further shown in Commonwealth ex rel. Robinson v. Robinson, 505 Pa. 226, 478 A.2d 800 (1984). There Justice Papadakos, writing for our Supreme Court, indicated, while once again quoting from Carson, supra, that the appellate court was to remain within the proper bounds of its review and base a decision “upon its own independent deductions and inferences from the facts as found by the hearing *96judge." 478 A.2d at 806 (emphasis in original). The Robinson opinion went on to state:
----Thus, an appellate court is empowered to determine whether the trial court’s incontrovertible factual findings support the trial court’s factual conclusions, but may not interfere with those conclusions unless they are unreasonable in light of the trial court’s factual findings ... and, thus, represent a gross abuse of discretion, ...
478 A.2d at 806, (citations omitted).
This passage indicates that the abuse of discretion standard of review relates to our review of the trial court’s factual conclusions, which we are bound by unless unsupported by or contrary to the evidence of record. However, this passage does not indicate that, absent a gross abuse of discretion, we are bound by the hearing court’s custody determination. If this were the case, it would appear, there could be no appellate review of “the broadest type” as indicated in Carson.
The importance of this distinction is illustrated in cases such as the present one. The majority does not take exception to the factual findings or factual conclusions of the hearing court yet they conclude that the custody determination itself does not serve the child’s best interests, because it calls for yearly shifts of residence, for schooling purposes, between St. Louis and Philadelphia. They contend, and I agree, that it is generally in the child’s best interests to stay in the same school system.
However, I cannot agree that the ordered custody arrangement represents a gross abuse of discretion on the part of the hearing court. The hearing court was faced with a difficult decision between ordering the child to remain in one school system, which would require the child to remain in the physical custody of one parent for a great majority of the time, a situation exacerbated by the great distance between the mother’s and father’s residences; and, alternating physical custody of the child for a full school year between the parents on a year to year basis. Both arrangements would have advantages and disadvantages *97but neither seems to me to be so lacking in consideration or potentially harmful to the child to be equivalent to a gross abuse of discretion. To so hold just depreciates the meaning of that statement. Yet, apparently both parents agree that the better custody arrangement is one which provides some “stability”. To this extent I believe the majority’s custody arrangement better serves the child’s interests than the one ordered by the trial court. As I do not read the relevant caselaw to require us to find a gross abuse of discretion on the hearing court’s part as to its custody determination prior to rejecting its custody order, I concur in the result reached by the majority.