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A man with an extensive criminal history has made significant steps through his participation in drug court and has shown that he clearly desires to act as his child’s father, a split Court of Appeals of Indiana ruled Friday in affirming a trial court’s denial of an adoption petition filed by the child’s great-grandparents.
According to court records, James and Marilyn DeClerck are the maternal great-grandparents of 7-year-old P.J.W.
Ronald Walters is the father of the child. The mother is deceased.
The child lived part-time with the grandparents until 2019, when he moved to Illinois to live with them on a full-time basis.
The grandparents established permanent guardianship over P.J.W. in September 2020, without objection from Walters.
Walters has an extensive criminal history dating back to 2003, which includes felony convictions for strangulation of his own mother in 2019 and possession of methamphetamine in 2021. He has been incarcerated for most of P.J.W.’s life.
In April 2022, the grandparents petitioned to adopt P.J.W.
Walters filed a timely objection and motion to contest the adoption.
In February, the Montgomery Superior Court held a hearing to determine whether Walters’ consent to the adoption was required.
Walters testified that he was participating in drug court, had sent letters to P.J.W. and messaged Marilyn over Facebook asking to see P.J.W.
The grandparents never responded to any of Walters’s attempts.
The trial court ruled that Walters’ consent to the adoption was not necessary and that he had not provided financial support when he was able to do so.
However, the trial court did not find Walters was unfit to parent P.J.W.
During the final adoption hearing in April, the grandparents testified that they have raised P.J.W. since 2019 and have provided significant and consistent care since the child’s birth.
They admitted to receiving communication from Walters but never passed them along to the child. They stated they have kept the letters to show the child when he is older.
Walters testified that he had stable employment, a home, close ties to his community and that he wanted to be a father to P.J.W.
The trial court denied the grandparents’ petition for adoption, finding that Walters had made significant improvements to his life and that the grandparents were asking to be the parents of P.J.W. well into their 80s.
On appeal, the grandparents argued that the trial court abused its discretion when it found that adoption was not in the child’s best interests based on their advanced ages and Walters’ purported rehabilitation.
The Court of Appeals found the trial court judge was clearly convinced that Walters appeared to have changed his life for the better.
According to the appellate court, the trial court found the father’s testimony compelling in opting to not terminate his parental rights, and his credibility cannot be reassessed on appeal.
“Importantly, the Grandparents’ guardianship remains in full force and effect. We may not have made the same decision as the trial court, but that is not our standard of review,” Judge Paul Mathias wrote.
Judge Patricia Riley concurred with the majority opinion, but Judge Terry Crone dissented with a separate opinion.
Crone wrote that he agreed with the majority’s general presumption of correctness afforded to trial court decisions in family law matters.
However, Crone disagreed with the trial court’s conclusion that it was “inherently” in the child’s best interest to be raised by a biological parent.
“That does not constitute a proper legal conclusion. If it were so, the mere existence of a biological parent would preclude adoption in every instance,” Crone wrote.
Crone noted that Walters had committed a new criminal offense between the consent hearing and the best-interests hearing, where he attempted to downplay it as “just a driving while suspended” charge.
“Such disregard for the law does not demonstrate reformation from his long, violent history,” Crone wrote.
Crone also noted that Walters has four other children, but only sees two of them.
“Today, on average, people live longer, healthier, more productive lives than just a few generations ago. And, we trust people in their seventh and eighth decade with extraordinarily difficult responsibilities, including running our country. To cavalierly dismiss, simply because they will be in their eighties when Child becomes an adult, two ‘healthy and active,’ fully committed relatives as adoptive parents when they are essentially the only parents that Child has known strikes me as being the opposite of the best interests of Child,” Crone wrote. “If at some point our legislature sees fit to set a maximum age for adoptive parents, then I will reconsider. Until then, I cannot concur with utilizing clear age bias to justify denying Child the stability, financial support, and love of the DeClercks, particularly given Father’s history.”
Crone stated that he would reverse with instructions to grant the petition for adoption.
The case is In Re: The Adoption of P.J.W. James D. DeClerck and Marilyn J. DeClerck v. Ronald J. Walters, 23A-AD-1254.
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