Case ID: ad_161/html/0589-01.html
Source: Caselaw Access Project
Author: {"author": "Scott, J.:", "license": "Public Domain", "url": "https://static.case.law/"}
Date Created: 2024-08-24T03:29:51.129683

In the Matter of the Petition of Florence Louise Ziegler, Lately and Usually Known as Florence Louise Brandt, Appellant, to Set Aside a Certain Proceeding for the Abrogation of Her Adoption by William Ziegler and Electa Matilda Ziegler. Electa Matilda Ziegler, Individually, and Others, Respondents.
    First Department,
    April 3, 1914
    Adoption — abrogation of adoption—jurisdiction of surrogate—relief is in equity.
    An abrogation of an adoption requires an agreement executed by the parties interested and the consent of the surrogate. The surrogate in giving his consent acts in his administrative, not in his judicial capacity, nor is the consent signed by him a decree or order of the Surrogate’s Court. Hence, a surrogate has no jurisdiction to revoke the abrogation of an adoption, which relief can be obtained only in a court of equity.
    Appeal by Florence Louise Ziegler from a decree of the Surrogate’s Court of the county of New York, entered in the office of said surrogate on the 17th day of October, 1913, denying petitioner’s application to vacate and set aside the agreement for and the consent of the surrogate to the abrogation of the adoption of said petitioner by William Ziegler, now deceased, and his wife, Electa M. Ziegler.
    
      Harry S. Mecartney, for the appellant.
    
      John M. Bowers, for the respondents.
   Scott, J.:

The matters at issue and the questions of law involved are so fully and satisfactorily dealt with in the opinion of Mr. Surrogate Fowler (82 Mise. Rep. 346), which we adopt, that any further discussion at the present time is unnecessary.

We entertain some doubt, however, whether the Surrogate’s Court has jurisdiction to entertain the proceeding and to grant the relief desired. That court is one of strictly limited statutory jurisdiction and has no general equity powers. The proceedings, under the Domestic Relations Law (Gen. Laws, chap. 48 [Laws of 1896, chap. 272], § 66; now Consol. Laws, chap. 14 [Laws of 1909, chap. 19], § 116, as amd. by Laws of 1913, chap. 38), for the abrogation of an act of voluntary adoption consist of an agreement executed by the parties interested, and the consent of the county judge or the surrogate. They are not judicial in their character and the surrogate in giving his consent acts in his administrative and not in his judicial capacity, nor is the consent signed by him in any sense a decree or order of the Surrogate’s Court. If the attempted act of abrogation is insufficient under the statute it may be attacked even collaterally, in any proceeding, and if for any reason it be deemed necessary that it be revoked in a judicial proceeding only a court of equity would have jurisdiction so to revoke it.

For this reason as well as for those so well stated by Mr. Surrogate Fowler, the order appealed from must be affirmed, with costs.

Ingraham, P. J., Clarke, Dowling and Hotchkiss, JJ.. concurred.

Decree affirmed, with costs.