Court Opinion

ID: 9520485
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 01:40:48.308817+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:46:19.162397
License: Public Domain

PRESIDING JUSTICE SCARIANO, specially concurring: I agree with my colleagues that the petitioners may not intervene in the pending adoption case, and I concur also in their decision that the petitioners be permitted to file their petition to adopt and that their petition be heard separately from the one filed by the respondents but by the same judge. I should like to add my own reasons for so agreeing. I think it safe to say that the General Assembly could not have had adoption cases in mind when it enacted the intervention and consolidation provisions of our Code of Civil Procedure (Ill. Rev. Stat. 1985, ch. 110, pars. 2 — 408, 2 — 1006, respectively), for neither appears to lend itself with any facility to the unique procedure required to be followed in adoption cases. Yet it is altogether clear that the legislature has granted to grandparents not only the right to adopt a grandchild, but it has also exempted them from the 30-day requirement of section 5A (Ill. Rev. Stat. 1985, ch. 40, par. 1507A). Accordingly, I have not the organs to perceive the reasoning of the respondents herein that the “petitioners have no right to file their petition to adopt Jonathan absent leave to intervene in respondents’ proceeding to adopt him.” Nowhere does the adoption act make the petitioners’ right contingent upon their being given leave to intervene in any pending proceeding to adopt. And it hardly needs to be said that the right to file the petition carries with it the corollary right that the petition be heard, for surely the legislature could not have intended that the mere filing of the petition should be the end and all of the right to do so. Therefore, although we permit the petitioners to file their petition to adopt without according them the intervention or the consolidation they seek, the hearing on their petition and upon that of the respondents should afford the trial court the benefit of all of the evidence it will need in order that it might fulfill its solemn duty of deciding what is in the best interest of this infant child for the remainder of the very long life ahead of him.