O'Neill v. O'Neill

• Decision Date: 03 June 1957
• Citation: 45 Misc.2d 1,255 N.Y.S.2d 776
• Parties: Application of Thomas O'NEILL, Petitioner, v. Sondra M. O'NEILL, Respondent, for an Order regulating the Custody, Care, Control, Education, Welfare and Support of Leslie Ann O'Neill, an infant born on
• Court: New York Supreme Court

Page 776

255 N.Y.S.2d 776

45 Misc.2d 1

Application of Thomas O'NEILL, Petitioner, v. Sondra M. O'NEILL, Respondent, for an Order regulating the Custody, Care, Control, Education, Welfare and Support of Leslie Ann O'Neill, an infant born on June 3, 1957.

Supreme Court, Special Term, New York County, Part XII.

Jan. 25, 1965.

Parnell J. T. Callahan, New York City, for petitioner.

Howard I. Brenner, New York City, for respondent.

SAMUEL J. SILVERMAN, Justice.

Proceeding to regulate the custody, education, support, etc., of an infant.

I. The major issue arises on the father's request that the child be brought up in the Roman Catholic religion--specifically, that she either attend a Roman Catholic parochial school or attend a Roman Catholic institution on a released- time program.

Petitioner, the father, is a Roman Catholic. Respondent mother is jewish.

The parties were married in New York in April, 1954, in a Roman Catholic Church ceremony. In connection with and as a prerequisite to that marriage, the parties executed the standard form written undertaking of the New York Archdiocese that any children of the marriage would be raised in the Roman Catholic religion. Thereafter, they moved to England where they lived for some years. Their daughter, Leslie, was born in England in June, 1957. In the early months of 1962, the parties separated. In November, 1962, a decree nisi for divorce was granted to the wife in the English High Court of Justice, on the ground of the husband's adultery and cruelty. The decree became final on May 10, 1963. The action was uncontested. The wife was granted custody of the infant, presumably without objection from the husband. In December, 1962, pursuant to permission granted by the English court, the wife returned to the United States with the infant. Thereafter in the Spring of 1964, the husband also returned to the United States and all parties now reside in New York State. The husband has remarried out of the Roman Catholic Church, a marriage in the Roman Catholic Church being impossible in view of his previous marriage. The wife has recently remarried, her husband being Jewish; and she and her husband observe the Jewish religion. The child, at least since her return to this country, has been affiliated with the Jewish religion and her mother has taken her to children's services at a Reform Jewish temple.

For a good deal of the period that they were married to each other, the relationship between petitioner and respondent appears to have been a stormy one; and an important subject of dispute appears to have been related to their religious differences.

In 1955 the parties were apparently informally separated for a period. In about April 1955, they were reconciled. In connection with that reconciliation, there was discussion of the religion in which any possible offspring of the marriage might be raised, the husband wanting any child to be raised as a Roman Catholic, the wife objecting to this and suggesting some other religion, e. g., Unitarianism. The dispute was never resolved.

About two years later, in June 1957, the child was born.

It appears to the Court that from a religious standpoint, the home of the parties, and the upbringing of the child, while the parties were living together, may best be described as non-denominational, with points of contact with the Roman Catholicism, Protestantism and Judaism.

The child was baptized in the Roman Catholic Church about a month after her birth. At Christmas and Chanukah time there would be a Christmas tree at home and there would also be Chanukah lights. It seems fair to say that neither Christmas nor Chanukah were treated as particularly denominational religious observances in the home of the parties. Both the husband's and the wife's religious observances appear to have been extremely irregular and infrequent while they were living together, though the husband has at all times considered himself a Catholic and the wife has at all times considered herself to be Jewish. The husband did attempt to teach the child to make the Sign of the Cross, and to give the child a little training in the Roman Catholic religion, but it does not appear that it can fairly be said that the child was really being brought up in any particular religion. When it came time for her to attend school, she was sent, with the approval of both parents, to a school affiliated with the Church of England.

After the parties separated, and for the few months before the wife returned to the United States, the husband did, on the occasions when he had the child on Sundays, attend Mass with the child with fair regularity. But this was after the parties had separated and were being divorced.

After the wife and child returned to the United States, the husband's contacts with the child, even after his return to the United States, were rather infrequent.

At least, since December, 1962, the wife...