Kreps v. Kreps

[¶ 44.] Judicial decisions on children’s lives deserve our highest effort. Here is no place for perfunctory procedure. For this reason, I cannot endorse the trial court’s flawed process. Although the court at the close of trial issued an oral decision from the bench, which remarks form part of the written findings, much of the findings the court later signed as proposed by winning counsel reflect not the expression of independent judicial thought but the rhetoric of adversarial excess.

[¶ 45.] If trial courts fail to “make careful study of the suggested findings in all their bearings before…