Court Opinion

ID: 9612946
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 04:12:35.284405+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:03:23.939813
License: Public Domain

BURNETT, Judge,
specially concurring.
I join the Court in upholding the district judge’s decision to vacate the magistrate’s judgment and to remand the case. However, I respectfully disagree with portions of the Court’s analysis.
Part I of today’s opinion correctly holds that a parent’s conduct several years before a divorce should be considered in determining child custody only if there is a nexus between such conduct and the parent’s current ability to serve the child’s best interests. In this case the magistrate did not identify the nexus with sufficient clarity. Accordingly, I agree that a remand is required. However, I see no purpose in denigrating the grammar or structure of the magistrate’s findings of fact and conclusions of law. Neither do I join the Court in condemning the magistrate’s reliance upon “impermissible factors.” The Court does not explain precisely what it means by this rigid, value-laden term. In my view, the magistrate should be guided by the flexible, value-neutral language found in Rule 401,1.R.E. The Rule defines “relevant” evidence as “evidence having any tendency to make the existence of any fact that is of consequence to the determination of the action more probable or less probable than it would be without the evidence.” Thus, if evidence of a parent’s prior conduct genuinely makes it more probable, or less probable, that he or she will serve the best interests of the child, then the evidence may be admitted and accorded appropriate weight in determining the custodial arrangement best suited to the child’s needs.
Part II of the Court’s opinion directs the magistrate to clarify his decision establishing joint legal custody but granting the father “primary physical custody subject only to [the mother’s] rights of visitation.” A clarification is necessary. However, the fault does not lie entirely with the magistrate. Rather, some confusion may be attributed to the governing statute, I.C. § 32-717B. This statute is quoted entirely in the lead opinion. At subsection (1) it contains an apparent ambiguity. It defines “joint custody” as an order which provides “that physical custody shall be shared by the parents____” (Emphasis added.) However, in the next sentence the subsection states that “the court may award either joint physical custody or joint legal custody or both____” (Emphasis added.) Today’s opinion does not address this ambiguity but it offers a pragmatic interpretation of the statute. It holds that a joint custody decree may contain language vesting sole or “primary” physical custody in one parent, but that such language must be accompanied by an explanation for rejecting joint physical custody.
Had the opinion stopped there, I would have agreed with its treatment of the statute. However, the opinion goes on to say that the magistrate’s decision in this case was deficient because it did not contain a finding of “unfitness” on the part of the mother. I find nothing in the statute which requires a magistrate to find one parent “unfit” as a requisite to vesting sole or primary physical custody in the other parent. Indeed, such a finding would be uncommon in a child custody dispute between two natural parents. A divorce is not a termination proceeding. Neither does Idaho have a “tender years doctrine” requiring a mother to be found “unfit” before custody of a young child may be given to the father. Rather, the magistrate’s task simply is to decide what custody arrangement, involving two presumably “fit” parents, will serve the best interests of the child. The magistrate may receive evidence which falls short of showing parental “unfitness” but which indicates that one parent is comparatively better able *563than the other to serve the child’s needs in physical custody. This is sufficient. To require more — that is, to require a showing of parental “unfitness” in order to deviate from joint physical custody — is unsound as a matter of statutory construction and unwise as a matter of public policy.