Forestiere v. Doyle
| Decision Date | 02 April 1973 |
| Docket Number | No. 179138,179138 |
| Citation | 30 Conn.Supp. 284,310 A.2d 607 |
| Court | Connecticut Superior Court |
| Parties | Angelo FORESTIERE v. Berta DOYLE. |
Schweitzer & Mayor, Hartford, for plaintiff.
Day, Berry & Howard, Hartford, and Groobert & Mahon, Manchester, for defendant.
The plaintiff, the acknowledged father of the defendant's child, has sought a writ of habeas corpus to secure visitation rights with respect to his child. The defendant questions the plaintiff's standing to maintain the present petition.
Angelo Forestiere, Jr., was born to the defendant at Hartford on January 21, 1969. After Angelo's birth, the defendant lived with him in East Hartford, first for a short period of time in a three-room apartment at Governor Street and later at a better three-room apartment at Church Street. In October, 1970, the defendant moved to her present address in Manchester where she has been living ever since. The plaintiff asserts that he lived with the defendant both at Church Street and at her present home in Manchester until he moved out at her request. The defendant disputed most of the plaintiff's assertions but she does admit that he visited her at Governor and Church Streets about three times a week and that he lived with her in Manchester between November, 1970, and February, 1971, when she requested that he move out. She also allows that he gave her about $15 a week for support from 1969 to sometime in 1971. On November 19, 1970, the plaintiff signed a written acknowledgement of paternity at the Circuit Court in Manchester. On June 2, 1971, he signed an agreement to contribute $10 per week for Angelo's support, which agreement was approved by the Circuit Court. He has been complying with this order regularly. During the time that he claims he cohabited with the defendant, he also maintained an apartment at Woodland Street in Hartford, a room at Canterbury Street in East Hartford, and living quarters at Hillside Avenue in Hartford and gave these addresses from time of time on such documents as his operator's license, motor vehicle registration, and acknowledgment of paternity. The parties and their respective witnesses sharply disagree as to whether the plaintiff cohabited with the defendant during all the times he so claims, his witnesses testifying that they saw evidence of such cohabitation and the defendant's witnesses testifying that during most of the disputed periods they saw no evidence that a man was cohabiting with the defendant at the various addresses.
The defendant makes two major attacks against the petition. First, she says that the petition should be rejected because the plaintiff does not come into court with clean hands. The basis for this attack is her contention that the plaintiff falsely stated on his operator's license and his motor vehicle registration addresses different from those at which he now claims he was living. Even were the defendant's assertion to be accepted at face value, the plaintiff's judicial position would remain unchanged. The clean hands doctrine comes down to this: Where a claim is tainted by fraud of the claimant, equity will deny relief, but only where the claim grows out of, depends upon or is inseparably connected with the prior fraud. Gest v. Gest,117 Conn. 289, 296, 167 A. 909. Thus the rule applies only to the particular transaction under consideration and not to the claimant's conduct in other matters. Samasko v. Davis, 135 Conn. 377, 383, 64 A.2d 682. The plaintiff's conduct, even with the defendant's gloss, does not call for invocation of the clean hands doctrine in this case.
The defendant's second attack is on the plaintiff's standing as the natural father of the defendant's child to seek any relief from the court. The defendant contends that in habeas corpus proceedings involving questions of custody and visitation rights the petitioner must have a special interest, that the essential elements of such interest are parenthood, cohabitation and support, and that the plaintiff's sometimes cohabitation and...
To continue reading
Request your trial
-
Weidenbacher v. Duclos
...omitted.].12 See 10 Am.Jur.2d 850, Bastards § 10 (1963).13 The trial court relied on a Superior Court case, Forestiere v. Doyle, 30 Conn.Sup. 284, 286, 310 A.2d 607 (1973), for the proposition that, to have standing, the petitioner needed to have "a special interest" and "that the essential......
-
Pierce v. Yerkovich
...question but that the father of an out of wedlock child has standing to be heard on the issue of visitation rights (Forestiere v. Doyle, 30 Conn.Sup. 284, 310 A.2d 607 (1973)). The Courts of this State have undoubted authority to grant visitation rights to the father of an illegitimate chil......
-
Gardner v. Rothman
...v. Powell, 267 Ala. 19, 22 99 So.2d 195 (1957); Strong v. Owens, 91 Cal.App.2d 336, 341, 205 P.2d 48 (1949); Forestiere v. Doyle, 30 Conn.Sup. 284, 310 A.2d 607, 609 (1973); (In re One Minor Child, 295 A.2d 727, 728 (Del.Supr.1972); Mixon v. Mize, 198 So.2d 373, 375 (Fla.App.), cert. denied......
-
State ex rel. Wingard v. Sill
...v. Powell, 267 Ala. 19, 22, 99 So.2d 195 (1957); Strong v. Owens, 91 Cal.App.2d 336, 341, 205 P.2d 48 (1949); Forestiere v. Doyle, 30 Conn.Sup. 284, 310 A.2d 607, 609 (1973); In Re One Minor Child, 295 A.2d 727 (Del.1972); Mixon v. Mize, 198 So.2d 373, 375 (Fla.App.), cert. denied 204 So.2d......