Adoption of a Minor, In re

• Court: Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts
• Writing for the Court: Before WILKINS; CUTTER
• Citation: Adoption of a Minor, In re, 156 N.E.2d 801, 338 Mass. 635 (Mass. 1959)
• Decision Date: 06 March 1959
• Parties: In re ADOPTION OF A MINOR.

Page 801

156 N.E.2d 801

338 Mass. 635

In re ADOPTION OF A MINOR.

Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts, Suffolk.

March 6, 1959.

Argued Jan. 2 and 22, 1959.

Decided March 6, 1959.

John J. Tobin, Cambridge, for petitioners.

Albert R. Mezoff and Nathan Fink, Boston, for respondents.

Before WILKINS, C. J., and RONAN, SPALDING, COUNIHAN, WHITTEMORE and CUTTER, JJ.

CUTTER, Justice.

This is a petition filed April 6, 1956, for the adoption of a minor boy, born in February, 1956. The department of public welfare eventually ¹ filed a report disapproving the proposed adoption. The natural parents of the child were not married to each other at the time of the child's birth or when the petition was filed but were married November 30, 1956, some seven and one half months after the filing of the petition. They opposed the adoption, although the mother had consented in writing to the adoption before the filing of the petition for adoption. The probate judge by final decree on October 31, 1957, approved the adoption. The natural parents have appealed. The evidence is reported.

The facts are stated upon the basis of the judge's findings of material facts which are plainly justified by the evidence. The unmarried mother of the child, discovering that she was pregnant, went with the father of the child, in September, 1955, to consult a doctor. The doctor urged marriage. The father, a student then receiving G. I. aid of $110 a month, said that 'under no circumstances' could he 'possibly get married.' The mother said she did not want to use the baby to force marriage then or in the future. She declined to deal with the usual State agencies and asked that the 'doctor * * * refer the baby to some private family.'

The doctor discovered that the petitioners, married for eight years and childless, were going to Sicily in the hope of finding a child there to adopt. The doctor discussed this with the child's mother while she was still in the hospital following the child's birth. The petitioners in the meantime had gone to Europe, but returned by air at once on receiving word that the child was available. On her discharge from the hospital, the mother and 'the child's father left the new born baby at the home of the male petitioner's brother.' (See comment, infra, on this finding.) The confinement expenses of the mother were paid by the petitioners. The 'child's mother assented to the' adoption petition after being told that the paper she was signing was 'the adoption paper,' although the attorney did not want her to 'see the names of the adopting parents.' See Erickson v. Raspperry, 320 Mass. 333, 334, 69 N.E.2d 474.

The natural father and mother now live in a somewhat unsatisfactory apartment in a congested area. The father testified that he would plan to live for a time with his parents in a suburb of Boston, if the adoption should be in fact refused and if they should gain custody of the child. The father's income, while he remains a student and when first starting work, will be small compared to that of the petitioners.

The petitioners live in Winthrop and have adequate income and suitable facilities to enable them to give the child good care. Besides caring for the child, the female petitioner 'keeps house for her husband, and a fourteen months old baby boy placed [there] * * * by the Catholic Charitable Bureau.' They are happily married, 'regular church attendants and highly respected in their community.'

The department's psychologist examined the child in the petitioners' house. She stated that the female petitioner 'is to be commended for her loving and wise care of * * * [the child] when she had two babies to care for at one time,' that the child 'shows by his splendid development and contentment that he is secure in this home,' and that the male petitioner 'is * * * devoted to the children.' Counsel for the natural parents conceded that he did not 'know anything ill or bad about the' petitioners. There was testimony of a psychiatrist from the Children's Medical Center that 'any child who has developed very nicely in a family in which he has lived for nineteen months suffers a severe set back to be changed in [sic] any other situation.'

The judge concluded 'that it is for the best interest of this little boy to be the adopted son of the petitioners, not merely for security but also for the moulding of character.'

Relevant statutes governing adoption are set out in part in the margin. ² Various questions are raised by these provisions and by G.L. c. 190, § 7 (as amended through St.1943, c. 72, § 1), which provides that an 'illegitimate child whose parents have intermarried and whose father has acknowledged him as his child * * * shall be deemed legitimate and shall be entitled to take the name of his parents to the same extent as if born in lawful wedlock.'

1. The failure of the department of public welfare (see footnote 2, supra) to consent to the petition presents no obstacle to the adoption. Under G.L. c. 210, § 2A(E), as amended (see footnote 2, supra), an appeal to the Probate Court lies from the department's action. Nothing in the statute requires that such appeal be taken by any formal document. The trial judge, by an express reference to St.1957, c. 184, reasonably treated the hearing on the merits of the adoption petition as such an appeal.

2. The judge's finding that the child's mother herself, accompanied by the child's father, 'left the new born baby at the home of the male petitioner's brother' in a minor respect differs from the evidence, for the mother testified that she left the child at the doctor's office. This inadvertence is immaterial, for the judge would have been amply justified in finding that the doctor was the mother's agent to transfer the child to the petitioners. As the placement of the child for adoption thus was by both natural parents, the provisions of G.L. c. 119, § 6, as amended (see footnote 2, supra), were satisfied.

3. The probate judge's conclusion, that the adoption was for the best interests of the child, was justified. We must consider, however, an issue of law which does not appear to have been argued to the probate judge.

An illegitimate child acknowledged by the father becomes legitimate under G.L. c. 190, § 7, as amended, upon the intermarriage of the natural parents at least 'from and after the time when the intermarriage becomes valid under the law.' Hopkins v. Hopkins, 287 Mass. 542, 550, 192 N.E. 145, 148, 95 A.L.R. 1286. See Loring v. Thorndike, 5 Allen 257, 263; Inhabitants of Monson v. Inhabitants of Palmer, 8 Allen 551, 556; Houghton v. Dickinson, 196 Mass. 389, 391, 82 N.E. 481. Cf. Lopes v. Downey, 334 Mass. 161, 163, 134 N.E.2d 131. The father acknowledged this child on various occasions, notably by a petition for custody of the child filed on August 16, 1957. Because the child became legitimate about eleven months before the final decree, we must decide whether that decree could be entered without the father's written consent, in view of G.L. c. 210, § 2, as amended (see footnote 2, supra). If the persons whose consent to the decree of adoption is required under § 2 are to be determined at the date of the decree, the consent of the natural father at that time may have become necessary. If the persons who must consent to the decree are to be determined at the date of the petition or upon the return of an order of notice under c. 210, § 4, ³ then the result may be different. This question was first considered in this court for its possible bearing upon the Probate Court's jurisdiction to enter the decree. See Foster v. City of Everett, 334 Mass. 14, 16, 133 N.E.2d 480; Witzgall v. Witzgall, 334 Mass. 365, 368, 136 N.E.2d 219.

Sections 3, 3A, 4, and 5 of c. 210 provide some exceptions from the requirements of such consent laid down in § 2. Sections 3 (as amended through St.1955, c. 89) and 3A (inserted by St.1953, c. 593, § 1) do not directly cover the present situation, although § 3 does indicate that the date of the petition, in certain cases at least, determines the persons to whom notice is required under § 4 and whose consent is necessary except as provided in § 5 (see e. g. the case of a father in prison or who has deserted his child, whose conduct or status as related to the date of the petition determines whether his consent to adoption is required). See also the brief discussion of the effect of certain events subsequent to the petition in Barden v. Flannery, 256 Mass. 140, 141-142, 152 N.E. 311. The successive amendments ⁴ of § 3, although they show some recent relaxation of the legislative requirements of consents to adoptions by natural parents, also do not directly deal with the present case.

It may be argued that G.L. c. 190, § 7, has no necessary relation to adoption proceedings because it appears in a chapter of the General Laws relating to descent and distribution and because the section is usually thought of only in that connection. See, e. g., 38 B.U.L.Rev. 299, 311-312. Section 7, however, has been applied in cases not involving the devolution of property. See Inhabitants of Monson v. Inhabitants of Palmer, 8 Allen 551, 556, in which Hoar, J. (in considering whether children, deemed to be legitimate for other purposes, take the settlement of the father) said of a predecessor of § 7, 'Its terms are as broad and general as the language affords. And we do not think there is such evidence that the intention of the Legislature was to confine their application to the single subject of the descent of property, as will authorize this court to interpret it in any narrower sense by implication, than that which the import of the language used naturally suggests.' See also another legislative application of the broad policy behind § 7 in G.L. c. 46, § 13 (as amended through St.1956, c. 342), relating in part to amendment of birth records of legitimatized children. There has been brought to our attention no indication whatsoever that ...