In a strongly worded ruling, the state Supreme Court says Washington should never have removed Spokane woman’s son from her custody.
By Tim Connor
After she shouted for joy this morning, Holly Cork revisited the resolve she’s had to muster the last five years to try to get her son back. It’s the same resolve that led her to the Center for Justice and to attorney Andrea Poplawski in early 2004.
“I had no doubt about this from the beginning,” she said today, “I knew it was wrong, and I was bound to do whatever I could do to right that wrong.”
This morning, in a two-part but unanimous decision, the Washington Supreme Court vindicated that resolve and resoundingly cleared the way for 11-year-old Angelo Cork to be permanently reunited with his mom.
Said Andrea Poplawski, the lawyer who argued Holly Cork’s case before the Supreme Court a year ago: “I recognize the difficult decision the trial court was faced with in deciding this case as well as the competing views presented to the Court of Appeals. However I am elated the Supreme Court has now clarified the application of the Uniform Child Custody Jurisdiction and Enforcement Act and the often complex jurisdiction issues that can arise in custody cases.”
Poplawski emphasized the importance of the court’s rulings on the Uniform Child Custody Jurisdiction and Enforcement Act (UCCJEA) whose elements have been adopted by both states, Washington and Montana, in whose courts the custody case has been heard.
“Had the Supreme Court not made the decision they did today, the message Washington would be sending to other jurisdictions would be that this is a state that allows forum shopping when you are unhappy with another court’s rulings,” Poplawski said.
“The purpose of the UCCJEA is to prevent exactly what happened here–unnecessary lengthy litigation in a state that never had the authority to make any decision regarding the child in the first place. Two courts have now found Holly Cork to be a fit parent; We remain hopeful this second Supreme Court decision [the first was in Montana] will finally put an end to any more litigation by the former foster parents and that Angelo will be returned forthwith to his mother’s care where he should have been all along.”
The court majority’s opinion, authored by Justice Tom Chambers, firmly upheld an argument that the Center and Poplawski, (who’s now in private practice) had made from the beginning: that a Washington trial court simply had no business allowing Montana foster parents to come to Washington to seek custody of Angelo after the Montana courts had returned Angelo to his mother’s custody in 2002.
Beyond that, as the court also affirmed today, there was an important legal principle at issue. Given that both the Montana and Washington courts found that Holly Cork was a fit parent, a strong message in today’s decision was that there should have been no room, in this case, for the government to separate a child from its natural parent.
“On the merits, the judgment to permanently take this child from his mother is contrary to established law, including core constitutional principles” wrote Justice James Johnson in a concurrence signed by Justice Sanders and Chief Justice Alexander.
He continued, quoting from a U.S. Supreme Court decision: “‘Parents have a fundamental right to autonomy in child-rearing decisions. The United States Supreme Court has long recognized a constitutionally protected interest of parents to raise their children without state interference.’ State interference with a parent’s fundamental right is justified only ‘if the state can show that it has a compelling interest and such interference is narrowly drawn to meet [that] interest.’”
“I had no doubt about this from the beginning,” Holly Cork said today, “I knew it was wrong, and I was bound to do whatever I could do to right that wrong.”
The Center’s Chief Catalyst, Breean Beggs, was meeting with Center staff members early today when the announcement of the court’s decision came up on his computer screen. With Poplawski, Beggs had co-authored Holly Cork’s petition to the state Supreme Court and, today, he was thrilled for what the decision meant to Holly Cork and delighted that Poplawski’s hard work on the case had come to fruition.
“Andrea did the vast majority of the work on this case when Holly came to the Center and today we’re celebrating for Andrea as well.”
In the narrowest terms, the court majority’s decision today found that the intervention by a Spokane Superior Court judge violated the state’s Uniform Child Custody Jurisdiction and Enforcement Act (UCCJEA) by inappropriately reversing a custody determination made earlier in Montana.
Here the facts of Holly Cork’s difficult early years as a mother are relevant. After Angelo’s father was killed at a party in north Spokane in early 1998, Holly took her infant son to Montana where she wound up in a home for teenage mothers. When Angelo was two he was placed with foster parents at time when Montana was seeking to terminate Holly’s parental rights. However, the Montana Supreme Court upheld her parental rights and after Holly obtained a G.E.D. and a nurse’s aide certification, she was found to be a fit mother. Angelo was returned to her custody in early 2002 and she and her son returned to Spokane.
In the fall of 2002, however, the Montana couple who’d served as Angelo’s foster parents filed a petition for non-parental custody with the Superior Court in Spokane County, claiming she was not suited to have custody of her son. In August of 2003, even though the Washington court concurred with the Montana court that Holly Cork was a fit mother, the former foster parents were granted custody. Holly Cork was allowed to visit her son, but also required to pay child support to the Montana foster parents.
That decision, the Washington Supreme Court ruled today, was improper because under the UCCJEA, the State of Washington had no jurisdiction unless and until the Montana court first decides it doesn’t have jurisdiction.
“Montana has jurisdiction over this dispute because Montana made the initial child custody determination regarding A.C. [Angelo];” wrote Justice Tom Chambers for the majority. The foster parents, he continued, “are persons acting as parents under the act who still reside in Montana; and Montana has not declined jurisdiction.”
And because Montana has also adopted provisions of the UCCJEA, it is clear under laws in both states that the foster parents “must petition Montana and obtain an order that Montana has declined jurisdiction before Washington courts have jurisdiction to modify Montana’s custody order.”
“On the merits, the judgment to permanently take this child from his mother is contrary to established law, including core constitutional principles” — Justice James Johnson in today’s concurrence.
With its decision, the Supreme Court remanded the case back to superior court “with instructions to dismiss for want of subject matter jurisdiction consistent with the opinion.”
Beggs said he saw at least three important lessons in the court’s ruling today.
First, he said, it shows that with proper procedures that law can get to the correct result, “but if single impoverished parents don’t have the resources of a lawyer, they lose. There’s a legal framework in place but it doesn’t work unless there’s adequate legal representation.”
Secondly, he was heartened by the opinion’s affirmation that, in his words: “parents have the right to a relationship with their children without government interference unless there’s a legal finding that they are unfit parents. In this case, the government agent was the court because it removed Angelo from his mother’s home and moved him to a different state.”
Beggs said he thinks there is a clear bridge between the majority and concurring opinions in the way both delve into how Holly Cork was deprived of her rights because of the way the foster care system had been subverted.
In this case, he noted, Angelo’s foster parents argument for legal custody relied primarily on the argument that “because of the quality of their relationship with Angelo,” they should have custody based on the emotional bonds created with the boy during his stay with them.
But that argument, he noted, deeply undermines the purpose of foster care as a “safe harbor” for troubled parents and children.
“If this ruling had not been put in place it really would have had a chilling effect on the foster parent system,” Beggs said.
For biological parents, he said, they would have to resist putting children into short term foster care for fear that the relationship that would develop between the foster parents and the children would be used against them later when they were trying to regain custody. As for foster parents, Beggs said, such a precedent would open new and unsettling questions about the nature of the relationship they take on by accepting foster children and force them to continually wrestle with decisions about whether they should legally try to insert themselves between biological parents and foster children.
Today’s decision may not end the fight over Angelo, Beggs said, because the former foster parents could petition courts in Montana again, a possibility that Justice Johnson’s concurrence raised with some alarm. But Beggs said he thought the strong language about the rights of biological parents under federal law would discourage a court from removing Angelo from his mother’s custody, given that Montana has already found Holly Cork to be a fit mother.
The details and nuances of the decision were not much on Holly Cork’s mind today though. She was aglow with the thought that her forced separation from Angelo (who is in Montana today, and was last in Spokane for a visit three weekends ago) might soon be over.
“I screamed with joy,” she said when asked about the call she received from Poplawski. “I told her I loved her and I told her she’s awesome.”
–CFJ
