Case Title: In re Estate of Murcury

Citation: 177 Vt. 606, 2004 VT 118, 868 A.2d 680

Docket Number: 

State: vermont

Court: Vermont Supreme Court

Date: 2004-12-13T00:00:00Z

Document:
In re Estate of Murcury  (2004-013); 177 Vt. 606; 868 A.2d 680

2004 VT 118

[Filed 13-Dec-2004]

                                 ENTRY ORDER
       
                                 2004 VT 118

                      SUPREME COURT DOCKET NO. 2004-013

                            SEPTEMBER TERM, 2004

  In re Estate of Alan B. Murcury     }   APPEALED FROM:
                                      }
                                      }
                                      }   Franklin Superior Court
                                      }          
                                          DOCKET NO. S458-02 Fc

                                          Trial Judge: Howard E. VanBenthuysen

       In the above-entitled cause, the Clerk will enter:

       ¶  1.     The question presented is whether a child born out of
  wedlock who seeks to inherit from a putative father is constitutionally
  entitled to establish paternity through genetic testing after the
  twenty-one year limitations period for the bringing of a parentage action
  has expired. We hold that the statutory limit offends neither the Vermont
  nor the United States Constitutions.  Accordingly, we affirm the superior
  court judgment.   

       ¶  2.     Decedent Alan B. Murcury died intestate on July 5, 2002. 
  One week later, petitioner  Robin Morris filed a petition in the Franklin
  Probate Court to open an intestate estate, alleging that he was decedent's
  son.  The probate court appointed petitioner's attorney as administrator of
  the estate.  Shortly thereafter, defendants Ann L. Newitt and Jane Murcury
  filed a motion for relief from judgment, alleging that they were decedent's
  sisters and that, to the best of their knowledge, decedent did not have any
  children.  Following a hearing, the court issued a written decision,
  granting the motion.  Although petitioner, then thirty-eight years old,
  introduced a birth certificate naming decedent as his father, the court
  noted that the information on the birth certificate came from petitioner's
  mother, who had never married decedent; that there was no evidence decedent
  had ever seen the birth certificate; that decedent had denied paternity in
  an Agreement and Release executed near the time of petitioner's birth; and
  that decedent had never openly acknowledged petitioner as  his child, or
  been adjudicated his father through a timely parentage action under 15
  V.S.A. § 302.(FN1)
   
       ¶  3.     Petitioner also requested an opportunity to obtain and
  present evidence of genetic testing of decedent's sisters to establish
  decedent's paternity.  The probate court ruled, however,  that 14 V.S.A. §
  553(b) provided the exclusive means of establishing paternity, and that the
  court was statutorily unauthorized to accept such evidence.  The statute
  provides, in pertinent part, that "[a]n illegitimate child shall inherit
  from or through his father as if born in lawful wedlock, under any of the
  following conditions: (1) The father has been declared the putative father
  of the child under 15 V.S.A. § 306; (2) The father has openly and
  notoriously claimed the child to be his own." In the absence of proof of
  either circumstance, the court concluded that petitioner had failed to
  establish a right to inherit as the nonmarital child of decedent.    

       ¶  4.        Petitioner appealed to the superior court on the question
  whether § 553 barred the introduction of genetic testing, and if so whether
  such a bar violated his constitutional rights. Petitioner subsequently
  filed two additional motions for genetic testing of decedent's sisters,
  which the court denied.  The parties then filed cross-motions for summary
  judgment.  In October 2003, the court issued a written decision, granting
  defendants' motion and denying petitioner's.  The court concluded that
  under § 553, proof that the decedent has either acknowledged paternity or
  been adjudicated the father through a timely action under 15 V.S.A. § 302,
  represent the exclusive means of establishing a nonmarital child's right to
  inherit, and that the statute violates neither the United States nor the
  Vermont Constitutions.  This appeal followed.  

       ¶  5.     Petitioner frames the issue on appeal as "[w]hether the
  preclusion of genetic testing evidence by 14 V.S.A. § 553(b) discriminates
  against illegitimate children in violation of" the United States and
  Vermont Constitutions. The actual issue is more limited, however, as the
  intestate-succession statute, § 553(b), plainly does not prohibit
  nonmarital children from obtaining court-ordered genetic testing to
  determine paternity.  Section 553(b)(1) provides that a child born out of
  wedlock may inherit from his or her father when there has been an
  adjudication of paternity under 15 V.S.A. § 306, and the paternity statute
  specifically authorizes the court to order "genetic testing for the
  determination of parentage." Id. §  304(a).  A parentage action may be
  commenced any time after birth but not later than three years after the
  child reaches the age of maturity, id. § 302(b), and may be brought by the
  child or on the child's behalf by a natural parent or a personal
  representative.  Thus, the effective window for the filing of a parentage
  action and motion for genetic testing by a nonmarital child is twenty-one
  years from the child's birth. Nothing in the statute, moreover, precludes
  the simultaneous filing of a timely probate petition and a posthumous
  parentage action, together with a motion for genetic testing of the
  deceased, where the putative father dies before the child has reached the
  statutory age limit. 

       ¶  6.     The more narrow question presented by this case, therefore,
  concerns the constitutionality of the statutory requirement that a
  nonmarital child who seeks to inherit from a putative father must establish
  paternity through a timely parentage action and motion for genetic testing
  before the child reaches the age of twenty-one.  Since petitioner was
  nearly thirty-eight years old when he filed the instant action, he is
  barred from establishing paternity unless - as he asserts - he is
  constitutionally entitled to a genetic determination of paternity beyond
  the statutory time limit.  In addressing this issue, we are guided by a
  line of United States Supreme Court decisions subjecting statutory
  classifications based on illegitimacy to a heightened level of scrutiny
  under the Fourteenth Amendment.  While not "suspect" or subject to the
  "most exacting scrutiny," Trimble v. Gordon,