Ziezel v. Hutchinson
| Decision Date | 01 March 1920 |
| Citation | 109 A. 300 |
| Parties | ZIEZEL v. HUTCHINSON et al. |
| Court | New Jersey Supreme Court |
(Syllabus by the Court.)
Appeal from Court of Chancery.
Habeas corpus by Carl S. Ziezel against Benjamin H. B. Hutchinson and others, for the custody of petitioner's minor child. From an order awarding her custody to petitioner, defendants appeal. Affirmed.
William J. Kraft, of Camden, for appellants.
D. Trueman Stackhouse, of Camden, for appellee.
On the 15th of May, 1916, two days before her mother's death, Virginia A. Hutchinson, the infant daughter of the petitioner, and the subject of this controversy, was born at Camden, in this state, in the humble, but comfortable, home of her maternal grandparents, the defendants in this proceeding. The grandmother tells the simple story of the acquisition of the child at her birth:
Three years have elapsed, and in the interim the World War drew the petitioner from the old environment of his wife and child, and gave him the opportunity to become a lieutenant in the navy, as a dental surgeon, to cross the ocean frequently, and visit other lands, and incidentally to marry a lady, described by the lower court as "a woman of amiable disposition and moral worth." When his child was born he was unable to support and care for her, and quite manifestly the parental appeal of the grandmother was opportune, and fell not on unwilling ears.
To him manifestly, a young man without means, slightly over his majority, with laudable ambitions, and an education, as he testified, "in excess of the average," a new vista opened up; and in that mental vision the "youngster," as he laconically terms the child, would assuredly become a burden and perhaps a handicap. There not having been a legal adoption of the child by the grandparents, the consent given by the father on the night of the birth was morally, but not legally, binding upon him. 2 R. C. L. and cases; 29 Cyc. 1591, and cases.
With the advent of a new wife came the "vita nuova" of which Dante speaks, and also a salary in the navy in excess of $3,000 per year, and six furnished rooms in an apartment house upon a prominent avenue in Brooklyn. In the elder days the grandmother in the letters of the petitioner was "Dear Ma." In the metamorphosis that came with the new life, she was transmuted into "My dear Mrs. Hutchinson." The grandparents in Camden still maintained the old life, in the old way; and, as the years passed by, the child knowing no other parents, now at the interesting age of three years clings to them, and they to her, with all the filial affection and intense uevotion that time and tender family association alone can bring. Whether the father during that period furnished the grandparents with any substantial means of support for the child remains a controverted question upon the record; but concededly at most it was intermittent and desultory, and they alone practically nurtured her to her present development. In this situation the father upon this writ of habeas corpus claims her, as was his legal right. Like the famed denizen of Venice he had only to proclaim, "My deeds upon my head, I crave the law," and the law, in the absence of proof of unfitness, would respond to his wishes; for as Blackstone declares, "The empire of the father continues even after his death" (Vol. 1, p. 453), or, as Chancellor Kent states the same proposition, he is "in contemplation of the law, entitled to the custody of the persons, and to the value of the services and labor of the children during their minority" (2 Kent's Com. 193).
But in his testimony the petitioner deemed it necessary to accentuate his obvious legal right by invoking equitable considerations involving the alleged mental obliquity of the...
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In the Matter of the GUARDIANSHIP OF C.
...why the natural parents should be deprived of custody. Hesselman v. Haas, 71 N.J.Eq. 689, 64 A. 165 (Ch.1906); Ziezel v. Hutchinson, 91 N.J.Eq. 325, 109 A. 300 (E. & A.1920); In re Judge, 91 N.J.Eq. 395, 116 A. 720 (Ch.1920); Marcum v. Marcum, 265 P.2d 723 (Okl.Sup.Ct.1954). The court in In......
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