By: Amanda Chapman
A recent 2-1 Michigan Court of Appeals decision published
earlier this month,
Porter v Hill, ruled
that when a “natural” parent’s rights to their child are terminated, the grandparents
rights are terminated along with the parents.
This ruling seems to conflict with the Child Custody Act.
The heart of this controversial ruling centers on the
definition, or lack thereof, of “natural” parent vs “legal” parent. At least for now, grandparents are
out-of-luck, and this ruling will inflict some pain on select families.
In the Porter
case, the bio-Mom and Dad were married with two children. Mr. Porter’s parental rights to the children
were involuntarily terminated as a result of physical abuse. The parties were subsequently divorced. Mr. Porter passed away, and his parents (the
children’s paternal biological grandparents) then filed suit in Saginaw Circuit
Court for grandparenting time with their grandchildren.
Mother filed a motion for summary disposition, attempting to
keep her ex-husband’s parents from establishing rights with her children. Mother’s legal theory was that the grandparents
did not have standing, or a legal cause of action under these facts.
Mother’s dispositive motion asserted that when father’s
parental rights were terminated that, in turn, meant that any rights
grandparents may have had under the grandparenting provisions of the Child
Custody Act had been severed as well. The
trial court reluctantly granted mother’s motion for summary disposition, openly
acknowledging this case would be appealed to the Supreme Court.
It is important to note that no determinations have been
made, either in the trial court or the appellate court, as to the relative
fitness of the Plaintiff-Grandparents, or whether granting grandparenting time
would be in the best interests of the children.
A summary disposition motion is a dispositive motion that
attempts to dismiss the case before it proceeds through discover and onward to trial. The only question considered in this instance
was whether the grandparents had a legal cause of action (otherwise known as
“standing”) to bring the case in the first place.
Michigan’s Child Custody Act includes a section pertaining
to grandparenting time which provides that
[a] child’s grandparent may seek a
grandparenting time order under 1 or more of the following circumstances:… (c) The child’s parent who is a child of the
grandparents is deceased.
The statute defines “parent” as “the natural or adoptive
parent of a child.” “Grandparent” is
defined as “a natural or adoptive parent of the child’s natural or adoptive
parent.
The Court of Appeals affirmed the family court’s decision, holding:
Russell was not a legal parent of
the children… Plaintiffs, as Russell’s
parents, derived their rights as grandparents through him.
The court further stated that
it would be anomalous for the
Legislature to authorize a court to terminate a person’s parental rights based
on abuse but then to somehow “revive” those rights for purposes of grandparent
visitation.
Interestingly, Judge Mark Boonstra authored a
dissenting opinion.
First, Judge Boonstra noted that:
[T]he Legislature’s use of the
phrase natural parent and its
affording to a grandparent of a right to seek grandparenting time independent
of parental rights and notwithstanding parental desires…indicate both the
plaintiffs …substantial interest in this case and that the statutory scheme at
least implies that the Legislature intended to confer standing on the
plaintiffs.
Next, Judge Boonstra pointed out that the statute:
permits a ‘natural parent’ of a
‘natural parent’ to seek grandparenting time…and there is no dispute here that
plaintiffs were the ‘natural parents’ of Russell. The only question before us,
therefore, is whether Russell was a ‘natural parent’ of the minor children.
The dissent further goes on to elucidate the fact that the
Child Custody Act does not provide a definition for natural parent. The words of
a statute provide the most reliable indicator of the Legislature’s intent and
should be interpreted on the basis of their ordinary meaning and context in
which they are used. An undefined
statutory word must be accorded its plain and ordinary meaning…
In Porter, the
grandparents argued that natural parent
should be interpreted as equivalent to biological
parent. The dissenting opinion
supports this interpretation on the basis of the plain and ordinary meaning of
the word “natural” according to the Random House Webster’s College Dictionary
(1991) which defines it as “related by blood rather than by adoption.” Further, the dissent goes on the use Black’s
Law Dictionary (9th ed) definition of “natural” as “relating to
birth” as in a “natural child as distinguished from [an] adopted child.”
The majority opinion based their ruling on equating a natural parent to be the equivalent of a
legal parent. Yet,
the dissent astutely pointed out that the basis of such a determination
does not coincide with the plain and ordinary meaning of the word term
“natural,” and in fact the term is much more in-line as being similar to
plaintiffs’ proffered “biological” term.
The dissent contends that “natural
parent must connote something more and different than simply having “legal”
parental rights.”
Some local family law lawyers have opined that the majority of the Court of Appeals got this one dead wrong. For now, however, the majority decision stands.
In its decision, the intermediate appellate court asks the
Legislature to clarify their intended meaning of the term natural
parent; let's not hold our breath.
Posts
