Court Opinion

ID: 9656343
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-23 19:46:48.595502+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:13:31.796603
License: Public Domain

WAHL, Justice
(dissenting).
I must respectfully dissent. On the record before this court it is evident that the order of the trial court is based on an implicit but clearly erroneous finding of fact that visitation in Germany for 3 weeks during the summer months would be in the best interests of the child, Thomas, at this time. It is true, and the majority opinion places great emphasis on the fact, that Diane Montgomery, the custodial parent, after entry of judgment providing for visitation, agreed by formal stipulation in March of 1980 that Peter Tischendorf would have visitation with his son for 3 weeks in Germany during the summer of 1980. It is also true, however, that, before that proposed visitation, Thomas was reinterviewed by Dr. Kenneth A. Perkins, a licensed clinical psychologist who had seen Thomas several times since April of 1979, and Dr. James H. Gilbertson, a second licensed and highly qualified clinical psychologist. Both psychologists concluded, in affidavits presented to the court, that the scheduled visitation would not be in the child’s best interests because of fear and apprehension generated by a perceived threat to detain him in Germany.
The psychologists found Peter Tischen-dorf not to be the psychologically bonded parent nor to have shown any concern for Thomas’ own needs or desires. The court-ordered visitations in this country in 1979 and 1980, before the proposed 1980 summer visitations, had failed to establish the meaningful, trusting relationship between father and son which had been hoped for but *414which had had the opposite effect. Dr. Perkins found, after the July 1979 visit, when the father continually lectured and told the boy about his coming to live in Germany and showed him pictures of his “new” German school (which he could scarcely attend in a 3-week visitation period), that Thomas was under severe stress and anxiety as a result and that “forced involvement with this person, particularly long extended vacations away from the family home,” would compound his fears and anxieties.
Reviewing the development of the father-son relationship with Thomas in July 1980, Dr. Perkins found the boy’s attitude toward his father had changed substantially.
He recalled seeing his father twice, once for ten days in July 1979 and once for two days in March 1980. * * * * His father was still a stranger to him. [But] * * * Tom no longer was neutral or passive in views of his father. He did not want to see his father again. He attributed to his father evil schemes of kidnapping him to Germany and generally expressed that his father had no real warmth or interest in him.
Dr. Perkins found that Peter Tischendorf’s plans give very little recognition to Thomas’ wants and that his insistence on the German visitation, knowing the child’s expressed fears of traveling outside his home area, was insensitive to the child’s current emotional and psychological state. In spite of this evidence, the trial court concluded: “It is impossible, for Thomas’ father to reestablish a meaningful relationship with Thomas by brief visits to the United States. Unless there is an extended visit this year it is unlikely that the erosion in Thomas’ perception of his father can be changed.” The evidence before the court clearly shows that it is more unlikely that the erosion of Thomas’ perception of his father will be changed if the visit to Germany is mandated. On the basis of a continuing professional relationship with Thomas and the opportunity to assess the effects of previous visitations with his father, Dr. Perkins concluded that only hostilities and resentment on the part of the child would result from such continued visitation practices.
In reaching a decision the court ignored not only weighty psychological evidence of harm to the child but also the court’s own interview with Thomas, who indicated that he was afraid of going to Germany and did not want to go. The focus of a visitation determination must be what is best for the child. In making that determination, the child’s fears, whether justified or not, should be given considerable weight, especially when presented in connection with uncontroverted testimony that visitation may be detrimental.
The majority finds that a 9-year-old boy lacks the ability to assess the value of building an enduring relationship with his father and perceives it in Thomas’ best interests to be exposed to the family and culture of his German forebears and to take pride in his paternal roots. Nowhere is there evidence, however, that it is in Thomas’ best interest to be so exposed at this time in his life when he is feeling threatened and fearful. Dr. Gilbertson expressed his concern at Thomas’ nearness to adolescence and his need, more than ever, in that time “to experience the security of language, culture and a meaningful peer group to help articulate final social, emotional and sexual skills.” Any major disruption in Thomas’ living relationship, Dr. Gilbertson emphasized, particularly a different culture, would, at this point, not be in Thomas’ best interests psychologically or socially.
The North Dakota Supreme Court, in Bergstrom v. Bergstrom, 296 N.W.2d 490 (N.D.1980), determined that the lower court erred in awarding exclusive custody of an 8-year-old girl to her mother who intended to reside in Norway. The court concluded that the trial judge had not given adequate weight to the child’s wishes. The court reasoned that the child was of sufficient age and intelligence to make a rational choice as to her place of residence and that, in light of the child’s preference, it was contrary to her best interests to compel her to reside with her mother in Norway. Though Bergstrom dealt with custody rath*415er than visitation, the analysis of the Bergs-trom court is equally applicable here. Both the psychologists’ reports indicate that Thomas is a child of above-average intelligence who is capable of making rational decisions. Given Thomas’s strongly expressed preference and the uncontroverted reports of appellant’s experts, the trial court’s determination that visitation outside this country would be in the child’s best interests is clearly erroneous.
Certainly a child should know his father and his roots, but this case assumes an unusually troubling aspect because of the evidence presented by Diane Montgomery that the Ramsey County decree giving custody of Thomas to his mother would not be recognized or enforced in West Germany in the event that Peter Tischendorf detains his son in Germany. Tischendorf has filed a written undertaking with the Ramsey County District Court that he will return the child on time and will not seek custody in any foreign court. That undertaking is not worth the proverbial paper it is written on if he changes his mind, as the record indicates he has done on other occasions.1 Nor is there anything the Ramsey County District Court or this court could do to help Diane Montgomery, an American citizen, retrieve custody of her son, who is also an American citizen.
The detailed exhibits before the court included (1) a copy of the voluminous West German court file which shows, among other items, that Diane was adjudged the sole “guilty party” in the German divorce; (2) the affidavit of Brigitta Bodenheimer, a United States law professor and attorney, licensed in both the United States and West Germany, and the United States delegate to the Hague Conference on International Child Abduction, which explains that under German law only Peter may petition for custody of the German child, Thomas, and that it is highly unlikely that a German court would recognize the Minnesota decree; (3) the letter from the German Consulate General that explains the difficulties of getting any foreign decrees recognized and the specific tests for recognition of a decree, none of which are satisfied by the Ramsey County decree; and (4) the letter from the Department of State detailing how that department has had to deal with “parental kidnappers” and how very little it can do to effectuate the return of any American child detained in a foreign country.
My review of the record persuades me that Diane Montgomery is not seeking to deny Peter Tischendorf visitation with his son or the opportunity to develop a father-son relationship. The record shows that over the years she has sought to facilitate both. She seeks here only to restrict that visitation until Thomas desires it and until the courts of this state will make adequate provisions to insure that Peter Tischendorf will not remove or detain his son outside the United States as he threatened to do in 1976. In affirming the trial court’s decision to permit Peter Tischendorf to visit his son in Germany for 3 weeks during the summer months, this court has done the very least it could do to insure Thomas’ safe and timely return by increasing the letter of credit from $10,000 to a larger amount and by requiring Peter Tischendorf to furnish round-trip transportation for an adult companion to accompany Thomas to Germany and to obtain an order from an appropriate German court which will recognize the ex-*416elusive jurisdiction of American courts for determining Thomas’ custody and which acknowledges the duty of German courts to enforce appellant’s right to custody, subject to respondent’s stipulated right of visitation.
For my part, if we must face the constitutional issue, I agree with Justice Yetka that Thomas possesses a constitutional right not to be compelled to leave the territory of the United States. The record discloses that it has been demonstrated that Thomas can intelligently exercise that right and that he has, in fact, intelligently exercised his right to remain in this country.
I would reverse.

. Peter Tischendorf has alleged that he does not have now and cannot obtain custody of Thomas under German law, while two experts in German law state that he can easily obtain custody. He has never presented any document to substantiate Diane’s custody under German law. He informed the German court in his own divorce proceedings that Diane had abandoned him, that she had taken Thomas out of Germany without his permission and that he never planned to reside in the United States. He acknowledged to the Ramsey County District Court in May 1979 that he had considered moving to the United States, had looked for both a job and a house in Minnesota and that he had arranged for the travel of Diane and Thomas to the United States in 1974. When Diane and Thomas traveled to Germany to see him for 2 weeks in 1975, he sent them off to Spain for 10 days without him.