Adoption of Anonymous, In re
Decision Date | 25 October 1973 |
Parties | In re ADOPTION OF ANONYMOUS. I_ _. J_ _., Appellants, v. K_ _. L_ _., Appellee. |
Court | Indiana Appellate Court |
The trial court denied the petition of appellants, a natural father and his second wife, for the adoption of three minor children. The appellee, the natural mother who resisted the adoption, is the father's first wife. We affirm the denial.
The adoption petition alleged that the consent of the mother was not required because (1) she had abandoned or deserted the children for a period of more than six months immediately prior to the filing of the petition and (2) because she failed to communicate with them for more than one year when able to do so. Either of those reasons, if proved, would be sufficient to render the mother's consent unnecessary. 1 The mother's answer denied that she had abandoned or deserted the children or had failed to communicate with them as alleged in the petition.
After hearing the evidence, taking the case under advisement, and receiving briefs from the parties, the court found for the mother on her answer and against the father and his wife on their petition; 'that the natural mother of said children has not abandoned nor deserted said children for six (6) months or more immediately preceding the date of filing the Petition, and that the natural mother, for a period of at least one (1) year prior to filing of the Petition, has not failed to communicate with the children when able to do so; and that the adoption prayed for in said Petition should be denied.' On those findings judgment was rendered denying the petition at petitioner's costs.
The father and mother were divorced over four years before the adoption petition was filed. The decree of divorce, reciting that it was 'by agreement of the parties, until further order of the court', awarded custody of the children to the father with right to visitation to the mother for certain periods every other weekend. The mother exercised her rights on three or more occasions, but on two or more occasions an argument arose between the father and mother. The father thereafter refused to permit the mother to take the children. On one occasion the children's paternal grandfather, with whom the father and children were then living, told the mother he would kill her if she did not leave his premises. He went into the house and came back onto the porch with a shotgun or rifle.
The mother thereafter filed (in the divorce case) a petition for contempt citation against the father, but failed to appear for the hearing because she thought an agreement for visitation had been made by her attorney and her husband's counsel. When she was thereafter refused visitation she attempted further court action, but had no money for attorneys' fees and did nothing.
Both the father and mother subsequently married other spouses and for nearly four years prior to the adoption hearing the children have lived happily with their father and his second wife. The welfare department made an investigation and reported favorably on the proposed adoption.
There was no visitation or direct communication between the mother and her children during that four-year period. As to whether she made any effort to do so, the evidence is conflicting. It is also in conflict as to her contention that she communicated with them indirectly through her grandparents (the children's great-grandparents). The evidence most favorable to the trial court's decision is the mother's testimony on which we base most of our statement of the facts.
She kept in touch with her children through her grandparents who were friendly with the father and visited the children often. Several times she attempted to telephone to the father or the children but always the stepmother answered and she would hang up. In 1968 she drove by the house every two or three weeks to see the children but never did. Her husband tried several times to call the father about visitation and on two times was told by the father that there was no way she was going to see the children. When she bought clothes for the children shortly after the divorce the father wouldn't let the children have them and threatened to burn or throw away any gifts, cards or letters or anything she sent to the children.
On July 20, 1971, her grandparents took the mother and her husband with them to a little league baseball game in which one of the children was playing. The mother there observed the children but did not communicate, or attempt to communicate, with them. She said she was afraid of creating a scene and did not want to involve her grandparents. She and her husband sat in the grandparents' car at all times. After the ball game the father telephoned the grandmother and told her that if they were going to continue to bring the mother he would not inform them of the children's activities in the future. During the intervening years, on several occasions the grandparents had talked to the father about letting the mother see the children and were told that she had lost her visitation rights. After the father's telephone call the grandfather agreed to pay attorneys' fees and the mother filed a petition in the divorce action to fix visitation rights. One week later the father and his wife filed this adoption action.
This is not a custody case but is an adversary adoption proceeding. In such proceedings the child's best interest is never an issue until the resisting natural parent's relinquishment of parental claims 'has been first established by clear, cogent and indubitable evidence.' In re Adoption of Bryant (1963), 134 Ind.App. 480, 494, 189 N.E.2d 593, 600, 1 Ind.Dec. 298, 305. In Bryant the petitioners to adopt contended that an implied relinquishment of parental claims by operation of law had been established by proof of either abandonment and desertion or failure to support. In reversing a decree of adoption based on findings that those ultimate facts were established, Judge Hunter said:
(Emphasis in original.) 134 Ind.App. 489--490, 189 N.E.2d 598.
The facts in Bryant and the facts at bar differ in many respects, but the two cases have in common the fact that the children involved had a good home and parental care at all times during which abandonment and desertion by the resisting parent was alleged to have existed. And here, as in Bryant, in order to find an abandonment and desertion it would be necessary to hold that acquiescence by one parent in custody by the other parent constitutes, as a matter of law, relinquishment of parental rights and claims. Except for the alleged failure to communicate, there is nothing on which to base a finding of abandonment and desertion but the mother's agreement of the custody order. Since failure to communicate with 'a child in the custody of another person' is a separate ground for dispensing with consent, it does not appear that it can be the sole element, or one of the elements, of abandonment, especially when the person having legal custody is providing a good home and parental care.
To prove their alternative ground for dispensing with the mother's consent, i.e., the...
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