Radford v. Matczuk

This case involves the narrow but difficult problem of deciding whether the chancellor was correct when he struck from a divorce decree the previously granted right of a natural father to visit his teenage son, who has been in the custody of his mother since birth.

The agreed statement of facts informs us that the parties to this appeal were married in 1946 while the father was in the Armed Forces. (The natural father is the appellant and the mother is the appellee). The child was born in July of 1947, and in 1949 the mother obtained an absolute divorce from the father on the ground of…