Adoption of Female Child X, In re
| Decision Date | 15 July 1975 |
| Docket Number | No. 4411,4411 |
| Citation | 537 P.2d 719 |
| Parties | In the Matter of the ADOPTION OF FEMALE CHILD X. |
| Court | Wyoming Supreme Court |
Robert A. Gish, of Zaring & Gish, Basin, for appellants.
Before GUTHRIE, C. J., and McCLINTOCK and RAPER, JJ.
This is an appeal from a judgment dismissing the petition of the petitioners seeking the adoption of a female child. These petitioners are husband and wife, and the wife is the grandmother of this child, who is the offspring of her daughter, a respondent. At the time this child was born the mother was unmarried.
The respondents are the mother of this child and her husband, whom she married after the birth of the child. To avoid any possible embarrassment to the child involved, none of the parties will be referred to by name, but as petitioners or respondents; however, the names necessarily appear in the records of this court and of the district court.
There was no consent by the mother, who opposes this adoption. Petitioners seek this adoption, relying upon § 1-710.2, W.S.1957, 1975 Cum.Supp., and place their reliance upon the willful abandonment of the child and the asserted failure of the natural mother of the child and her husband to contribute to the support and maintenance of the child for more than one year immediately prior to the filing of the petition.
By way of answer to this petition, the child's mother and her husband assert that he is the lawful father by virtue of an adoption, deny that this child was left with the petitioners at that time on a permanent basis, contend they did so only because they were having marital difficulties which have now been settled, and assert that the petitioners had not made any request for maintenance or support of this child. It is to be noted that the parties stipulate that the respondents had made no contribution for the maintenance or support of the child.
The record shows that the child was born February 14, 1967, and was thus approximately seven years of age at the time of this hearing. The petitioners paid both the doctor and hospital bills at the time of the birth and the child remained in the home of these petitioners from the time of her birth until sometime in 1969. The mother was married in that year and had the child in her care from that time until October of 1972 when she was left with the petitioners for what was understood to be a couple of weeks and remained in the home and with the petitioners until the entry of the judgment by the court. Shortly after she was left with the petitioners, they took her to Colorado and she has resided at various places where the husband had employment. There was apparently no communication between the mother and the child and petitioners thereafter until June 1973, when the mother came to petitioners' home to see the child but saw only the husband because the child was on a vacation with her grandmother. Later in that month the mother did come to see the child and visited with her in the petitioners' home and admittedly told the child at that time that she would never have to leave petitioners again. The child was not available in Greybull most of the summer and fall of 1973 because the husband had employment elsewhere and the child was taken with petitioners.
Petitioners concede they never asked for any support from the mother nor her husband nor did they expect it, and the respondents made no offer of support. Both petitioners agree, however, that there was never any expectation that they be paid and the child's grandmother styled it a 'voluntary gratuity' on their part.
The relationship between the petitioners and the husband of the mother is apparently very bad and it is unpleasant when they meet. The mother testified without contradiction that it was an understanding when she left the child with petitioners that they should keep her until she could get herself settled. Although the record is not clear as to when this occurred, the grandmother at one time did ask the mother to relinquish her claim to the child so that petitioners might adopt her, but the mother refused.
There is a question in the record whether the respondent husband of the mother ever adopted the child. The trial court, believing there was a lack of evidence, dismissed him as a party, although there does appear a reissued birth certificate dated October 2, 1970, wherein the respondent husband of the mother appears as a parent. There is some reference in the testimony to another birth certificate, but this does not appear. The mother has had another child as a fruit of her marriage with her husband.
The trial court found there was no showing of abandonment. With this we find no fault and agree that petitioners failed in their burden to sustain that ground. All the proof submitted in this area demonstrates some parental inattention and neglect, which may in some manner be explained by the bad feeling between petitioners and the mother's husband and which did not contribute to the joy of any such reunion.
We have heretofore said that abandonment is more than temporary absence or neglect, In re Adoption of Strauser, 65 Wyo. 98, 196 P.2d 862, 868, and in the same case adopted the rule that evidence of such abandonment must be clear and convincing. The mother's refusal of the earlier request to give a written consent to the adoption by petitioners certainly belies an intention to abandon the child. There must be, in order to constitute abandonment, an actual intent to terminate...
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Johnson v. Safeway Stores, Inc.
...law, and, where possible, should be harmoniously construed in order to avoid conflicting and confusing results. In re Adoption of Female Child X, Wyo.,537 P.2d 719, 723 (1975); Woolley v. State Highway Commission, Wyo., 387 P.2d 667, 673 (1963). However, if the conflict cannot be reconciled......
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...considered and none other. When we read all statutes on the same subject together as one statute, which we must, In re Adoption of Female Child X, Wyo.1975, 537 P.2d 719, we then apply the well-known rule that special provisions must prevail over general provisions, Town of Worland v. Odell......
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