Court Opinion

ID: 9734258
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 17:30:02.384359+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:26:47.376563
License: Public Domain

DORIS, Justice,
dissenting.
I dissent from the majority opinion for the simple reason that it lacks common sense, violates established and recognized law, and works an injustice on all the parties involved in this dispute.
Firstly, I do not gainsay the fact that the question of subject-matter jurisdiction can be raised by the parties or the court at any stage of a proceeding. Under the particular facts of this case, however, I would decline to exercise our right to raise that question because respondent herself acquiesced to the Family Court’s authority. She states in her memoranda of law that the Family Court “has subject matter jurisdiction to adjudicate questions involving child support and visitation.” Therefore, I can find no error by the Family Court justice in addressing the merits of the dispute dealing with the issue of modification of support payments.
Secondly, I cannot conclude that the Family Court justice abused his discretion in exercising jurisdiction over the issue of visitation modification. We have said that a trial justice exercises proper judicial discretion when “he consider[s] all the facts in relation to the rights of the parties and with just regard to what is right and reasonable.” Matracia v. Matracia, R.I., 378 A.2d 1388, 1391 (1977).
I submit that here the Family Court was the most convenient and appropriate forum to adjudicate the dispute. There existed more than a bare or minimal nexus between the parents and the children and the forum state. At the time the miscellaneous and amended petitions were filed, Paula and the children were residents of the state. Thomas obviously had submitted to jurisdiction. The Family Court had maximum access to the relevant and essential evidence concerning the welfare of the children. It also had access to pertinent evidence concerning the change in circumstances, financial or otherwise, of both parents. It was in an optimal position to balance the relative competing interests of the parents. The case was ripe for decision, and therefore, it was right and reasonable for the Family Court justice to exercise jurisdiction on the matter of visitation modification.
*837Furthermore, I cannot comprehend how the majority opinion can draw its “most dispositive” and “strongest support” on this issue from the Uniform Child Jurisdiction Act. Such reliance exceeds bounds of logic and law because it attempts to interpret and then apply the legislative intent of the act to an issue that arose two years prior to the act’s passage. It is unsound to find an abuse of judicial discretion by giving an act retroactive effect when the legislation itself clearly does not give such effect. See e. g. Fox v. Fox, 115 R.I. 593, 596-97, 350 A.2d 602, 603-04 (1976); Town of Warren v. Frost, 111 R.I. 217, 301 A.2d 572 (1973); Langdeau v. Narragansett Insurance Co., 96 R.I. 276, 191 A.2d 28 (1963). By this action the majority opinion does a disservice to the public policy interests the act seeks to further.
Thirdly, the majority opinion gives but cursory attention to what respondent claims is the single issue in this dispute and the only issue that she briefed and raised at oral argument, that is, petitioner’s failure to use the arbitration procedure as set forth in the settlement agreement. The majority’s lack of emphasis on this issue is understandable since I perceive respondent’s reliance on this point to be misguided under the facts of this case.
Massachusetts law indicates that arbitration clauses are to be enforced by that state’s Superior Court and not the Probate Court. Kutz v. Kutz, 369 Mass. 969, 341 N.E.2d 682 (1976); Mass.Gen.Laws Ann. ch. 251, § 2 (West Supp. 1980). Rhode Island law indicates that arbitration clauses are to be enforced by the Superior Court and not the Family Court. Douglas Construction and Supply Corp. v. Wholesale Center of North Main Street, Inc., R.I., 379 A.2d 917 (1977); G.L. 1956 (1969 Reenactment) § 10-3-4.
Here the Rhode Island Family Court has no authority to enforce the arbitration clause, and therefore the Family Court justice was not in error. This is not to say that respondent may not have an action to enforce the arbitration clause but rather that said action must be pursued in the appropriate state court at the appropriate time.
The majority opinion aggravates and delays, rather than settles, the present dispute. It encourages jurisdictional competition, and I believe this action will only have an adverse and disruptive effect on the well-being of the most important parties to this dispute, the children. In the final analysis the majority opinion violates accepted judicial policies and goals and results in a contradiction because it lends itself to interminable litigation between geographically separated parents, a condition that the majority opinion not only claims to avoid but professes to alleviate.
In view of the foregoing reasons, I would deny and dismiss the respondent’s appeal, affirm the decree appealed from, and remand the case to the Family Court for further proceedings.