Court Opinion

ID: 9726333
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 12:44:46.028898+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:25:26.100110
License: Public Domain

REES, Justice
(dissenting).
I respectfully dissent from Division II and the result.
Margaret Clark Cross, the natural mother of the five children, is in a situation of her own choosing. She left her. five children, then ranging in age from one to seven years, to establish an adulterous liaison with her paramour, which relationship later led to a marriage. Fortunately, the children later found a “substitute” mother in the person of the petitioner, who has attended their physical wants and furnished them their creature comforts now for a period of over two years. The stepchild/step-parent relationship is at best a very tenuous one, and I am firmly committed to the view that the five children who were the subject of the adoption are entitled to have their situation stabilized, and it can be stabilized only by the entry of a decree of adoption as prayed for by the petitioner here.
The majority reaches the conclusion, and I agree, that the consent of Margaret, the non-custodial parent, is not essential here; however, it seems to me that she has effectively exercised a veto power over the petition of the step-mother to adopt. The majority concludes that the “children’s welfare, while vital, is not the only consideration”, and while I generally agree with this conclusion, I am strongly of the opinion it should be the controlling and overriding consideration.
The trial court had the benefit of the testimony of an experienced and qualified child psychologist who unequivocally recommended the adoption in the interest of the children. We have the benefit of the testimony of the child psychologist through the medium of the record. We have been repeatedly critical of proceedings in which the testimony of psychiatrists, psychologists and social scientists is not made available to courts and juries in many cases. Yet as here, where the testimony of a qualified psychologist is made available, the court refuses to dignify it by giving it any considerable weight in its eventual determination.
The trial court’s refusal to grant the decree of adoption, and this court’s affirmance of such refusal, effectively relegates the petitioner step-mother to the status of *186an unpaid domestic with the unhappy prospect of looking ahead to many years of serving the five Clark children and the household without the obvious satisfaction which would be hers if the parent-child relationship were to have been legally established. Meanwhile, the real mother of the children may indulge and entertain them during visitation periods without the day-to-day responsibilities of keeping the noses wiped, the raiment clean and the minor wounds bandaged, or furnishing a mother’s guidance in the moral and spiritual development of her own offspring. In my judgment the best interests of the children will be served by a reversal of the trial court, and a direction to enter a decree of adoption as prayed.
I would reverse.
MASON, J., joins in this dissent.