Williams v. Williams, Gen. No. 46651

• Court: Appellate Court of Illinois
• Writing for the Court: LEWE
• Citation: Williams v. Williams, 8 Ill.App.2d 1, 130 N.E.2d 291 (Ill. App. 1955)
• Decision Date: 02 November 1955
• Docket Number: Gen. No. 46651
• Parties: Lois WILLIAMS, Plaintiff, v. Ralph A. WILLIAMS, Defendant-Appellee, Eugene Martin and Helen Martin, Intervening Petitioners, Appellants.

Page 291

130 N.E.2d 291

8 Ill.App.2d 1

Lois WILLIAMS, Plaintiff, v. Ralph A. WILLIAMS, Defendant-Appellee Eugene Martin and Helen Martin, Intervening Petitioners, Appellants.

Gen. No. 46651.

Appellate Court of Illinois, First District, Third Division.

Nov. 2, 1955.

John T. Jones and Kimball Smith, Chicago, for appellants.

Charles M. O'Brien, Chicago, for appellee.

LEWE, Presiding Justice.

February 20, 1952, plaintiff Lois Williams obtained a decree of divorce from defendant Ralph Williams on the ground of extreme and repeated cruelty. The decree provided among other things that defendant pay to plaintiff 'as and for the support of their minor child forty dollars a month payable semi-monthly.' The parties stipulated that the custody of the minor child, Ralph Williams, Jr., born November 22, 1951, be awarded to plaintiff. Several days after the divorce decree was entered plaintiff remarried and went to Puerto Rico where she continues to reside. When the minor child was five days old he was left by plaintiff with her sister Mrs. Eugene Martin in whose custody he remained until the decree here appealed from was entered.

September 13, 1954 defendant filed a petition praying that the divorce decree be amended by awarding the custody of the minor to him. Mrs. Martin filed an answer. Subsequently upon leave of court Mrs. Martin and her husband filed an intervening petition asking that the custody of the minor be awarded to them. After a full hearing the trial judge denied the relief prayed for by the intervening petitioners and awarded the custody of the minor to defendant. The intervening petitioners appeal.

The record shows that on October 14, 1954 the trial judge entered an order referring the 'matter' to the Cook County Bureau of Public Welfare to make an investigation of the respective homes of defendant and the Martins. The cause was heard on November 26, 1954. After the proof were closed defendant's counsel called the attention of the trial judge to the fact that the matter had been previously referred to the Bureau of Public Welfare for investigation. Then counsel for intervening petitioners stated, 'I assume that such a report has been made for the court and the court has read it. Has the court any objection to permitting the respective counsel for the parties to see the report?' The trial judge replied, 'Well, it is a confidential report. It is only for the purpose of the court. I will tell you substantially what it is. They are both good people and they are both good homes. The environments are practically the same in both homes and I have to decide on a purely legal proposition.' The order here appealed from awarding the custody of the child to defendant found that 'Ralph A. Williams and the petitioners Eugene and Helen Martin are all good Christian people' and that 'all of them are fully satisfactory to this court.'

The question presented at the outset is whether the trial judge erred in referring the matter to the Cook County Bureau of Public Welfare for investigation and in considering its confidential report in modifying the decree.

In Scott v. Cohn, 134 Ill.App. 195, involving the custody of a minor child after a divorce, counsel for both parties agreed that the chancellor investigate for himself for the purpose of deciding whether the custody of a minor child be transferred from the mother to the father. There counsel for appellant argued that the trial judge determined the issues not only by the evidence heard in open court but by an investigation which he caused to be made. The court said, at page 202:

'If the chancellor might decide partly on an investigation made out of court, such as it is claimed was made in this cause, then he might decide wholly on such investigation, the only difference between the two cases being not in kind, but in degree. No agreement between counsel, such as is claimed to have been made, can bind, the minor, whose interest is the main question to be considered.'

In affirming that case our Supreme Court held, 231 Ill. 556, 83 N.E. 191, 192:

'While a very large discretion must be permitted the chancellor hearing these cases, yet it must be a judicial discretion and subject to review on the evidence heard in open court. The agreement of counsel cannot bind as to the interests of the minor, which is the paramount question in this proceeding. If the chancellor could decide partly on investigation made out of court, then the whole decision might rest upon such an investigation and could not be reviewed.'

Under similar circumstances the same question was presented in Des Chatelets v. Des Chatelets, 292 Ill.App. 357, 11 N.E.2d 13, where the trial judge based his findings on a confidential report from the Social Service Department. The court, in referring to the confidential report said, 292 Ill.App. at page 359, 11 N.E.2d at page 14:

'Whatever this may have been does not appear from the record, and, of course, we are unable to consider it. However, the record indicates that the court did consider it, and stated that he based his finding upon it. We are of the opinion that he was in error in so doing.'

In Albert v. Albert, 340 Ill.App. 582, 92 N.E.2d 491, a divorce suit in which the husband was charged with extreme cruelty, it appears that toward the end of the trial the attorney for the plaintiff stated that he would like to offer corroborative testimony by the twelve-year-old daughter of the parties Arlene Albert but that he hesitated to call her to the stand. Her attorney suggested that the trial judge take the child into chambers out of the presence of both lawyers and interrogators. The record shows that the witness was taken into chambers out of the presence of the parties and their counsel. What was said in the chambers does not appear in the record. The attorney for the plaintiff some weeks after the trial of the cause offered a written motion that the trial judge supply a written statement of the interrogation in chambers or that in the alternative the plaintiff be allowed to attach to the record an affidavit of the daughter purporting to record the preceedings which took place in the chambers between the child and the judge. The court made no ruling as to the competency of the affidavit but acceded to the attorney's request to allow it to be physically incorporated in the record. This court said, 340 Ill.App. at page 585,...