Source: http://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/456/91
Timestamp: 2013-05-24 13:14:57
Document Index: 681077880

Matched Legal Cases: ['§ 13', '§ 13', '§ 13', '§ 13', '§ 11', '§ 13']

Lois Mae MILLS, Appellant, v. Dan HABLUETZEL. | Supreme Court | LII / Legal Information Institute
Supreme Court aboutsearch liibulletin subscribe previews Lois Mae MILLS, Appellant, v. Dan HABLUETZEL.
456 U.S. 91 (102 S.Ct. 1549, 71 L.Ed.2d 770)
Argued: Jan. 12, 1982.
[HTML] concurrence, O'CONNOR, BRENNAN, BLACKMUN, POWELL, THE CHIEF JUSTICE
[HTML] Syllabus A Texas statute (§ 13.01) provides that a paternity suit to identify the natural father of an illegitimate child for purposes of obtaining support must be brought before the child is one year old, or the suit is barred. Appellant mother of an illegitimate child and the Texas Department of Human Resources brought suit in a Texas court on behalf of the child to establish that appellee was his natural father. The trial court dismissed the suit under § 13.01 because the child was one year and seven months old when the suit was filed. The Texas Court of Civil Appeals affirmed, holding that the one-year limitation was not tolled during minority and did not violate the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.
Reviewing the Texas law in Gomez, we held that "a State may not invidiously discriminate against illegitimate children by denying them substantial benefits accorded children generally." 409 U.S., at 538, 93 S.Ct., at 875. "Once a State posits a judicially enforceable right on behalf of children to needed support from their natural fathers," we stated, "there is no constitutionally sufficient justification for denying such an essential right to a child simply because its natural father has not married its mother." Ibid. Although we recognized that "the lurking problems with respect to proof of paternity . . . are not to be lightly brushed aside," we concluded that they did not justify "an impenetrable barrier that works to shield otherwise invidious discrimination." Ibid. Accordingly, we held Texas' denial of support rights to illegitimate children to be a denial of equal protection of law.
Not surprisingly, this legislation was found by Texas courts to be an inadequate response to Gomez. A panel of the Texas Court of Civil Appeals held that, because of Gomez, "when the Legislature later provided judicial relief against the father on behalf of a legitimate child for support, it necessarily provided the same relief on behalf of an illegitimate child." In re R____ V____ M____, 530 S.W.2d 921, 922-923 (Tex.Civ.App.1975). Only after this judicial recognition of a right to support did the Texas Legislature establish procedures for a paternity and support action on behalf of illegitimate children. Texas Dept. of Human Resources v. Hernandez, supra, at 191.
Texas views this provision as part of the substantive right accorded illegitimate children, not simply as a procedural limitation on that right. Texas Dept. of Human Resources v. Hernandez, supra, at 192-193. Moreover, Texas courts have applied § 13.01 literally to mean that failure to bring suit on behalf of illegitimate children within the first year of their life "results in their being forever barred from the right to sue their natural father for child support, a limitation their legitimate counterparts do not share." In re Miller, supra, at 334. Thus, in response to the constitutional requirements of Gomez, Texas has created a one-year window in its previously "impenetrable barrier," through which an illegitimate child may establish paternity and obtain paternal support.
Appellant in this case is the mother of a child born out of wedlock in early 1977. In October 1978, she and the Texas Department of Human Resources, to which appellant had assigned the child's support rights,
brought suit on behalf of the child to establish that appellee was his natural father. Appellee answered by asserting that the action was barred by § 13.01 because the child was one year and seven months old when the suit was filed. The trial court agreed with appellee and dismissed the suit.
The dismissal was affirmed on appeal by the Texas Court of Civil Appeals, and discretionary review was denied by the Texas Supreme Court upon a finding of no reversible error.
The Court of Civil Appeals, relying upon its decision in Texas Dept. of Human Resources v. Hernandez, 595 S.W.2d 189 (1930), held that the one-year limitation was not tolled during minority and did not violate the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. The Hernandez decision in turn relied upon the constitutional analysis in Texas Dept. of Human Resources v. Chapman, 570 S.W.2d 46 (Tex.Civ.App.1978), where another division of the Court of Civil Appeals had found that "the legitimate state interest in precluding the litigation of stale or fraudulent claims" was rationally related to the one-year bar and therefore did not deny illegitimate children equal protection of the law. Id., at 49.
The fact that Texas must provide illegitimate children with a bona fide opportunity to obtain paternal support does not mean, however, that it must adopt procedures for illegitimate children that are coterminous with those accorded legitimate children. Paternal support suits on behalf of illegitimate children contain an element that such suits for legitimate children do not contain: proof of paternity. Such proof is often sketchy and strongly contested, frequently turning upon conflicting testimony from only two witnesses. Indeed, the problems of proving paternity have been recognized repeatedly by this Court. Parham v. Hughes, 441 U.S. 347, 357, 361, 99 S.Ct. 1742, 1748, 1750, 60 L.Ed.2d 269 (1979); Lalli v. Lalli, 439 U.S. 259, 269, 99 S.Ct. 518, 525, 58 L.Ed.2d 503 (1978); Trimble v. Gordon, 430 U.S. 762, 772, 97 S.Ct. 1459, 1466, 52 L.Ed.2d 31 (1977); Gomez v. Perez, 409 U.S., at 538, 93 S.Ct., at 875.
Therefore, in support suits by illegitimate children more than in support suits by legitimate children, the State has an interest in preventing the prosecution of stale or fraudulent claims, and may impose greater restrictions on the former than it imposes on the latter. Such restrictions will survive equal protection scrutiny to the extent they are substantially related to a legitimate state interest. See Lalli v. Lalli, supra, 439 U.S., at 265, 99 S.Ct., at 523; Trimble v. Gordon, supra, 430 U.S., at 767, 97 S.Ct., at 1463; Mathews v. Lucas, 427 U.S. 495, 510, 96 S.Ct. 2755, 2764, 49 L.Ed.2d 651 (1976).
The State's interest in avoiding the litigation of stale or fraudulent claims will justify those periods of limitation that are sufficiently long to present a real threat of loss or diminution of evidence, or an increased vulnerability to fraudulent claims.
By granting illegitimate children only one year in which to establish paternity, Texas has failed to provide them with an adequate opportunity to obtain support. Paternity suits in Texas "may be brought by any person with an interest in the child," Code § 11.03, but during the child's early years will often be brought by the mother. It requires little experience to appreciate the obstacles to such suits that confront unwed mothers during the child's first year. Financial difficulties caused by childbirth expenses or a birth-related loss of income, continuing affection for the child's father, a desire to avoid disapproval of family and community, or the emotional strain and confusion that often attend the birth of an illegitimate child all encumber a mother's filing of a paternity suit within 12 months of birth. Even if the mother seeks public financial assistance and assigns the child's support claim to the State, it is not improbable that 12 months would elapse without the filing of a claim. Several months could pass before a mother finds the need to seek such assistance, takes steps to obtain it, and is willing to join the State in litigation against the natural father.
A sense of the inadequacy of this one-year period is accentuated by a realization that failure to file within 12 months "results in illegitimates being forever barred from the right to sue their natural father for child support," In re Miller, 605 S.W.2d, at 334, while legitimate children may seek such support at any time until the age of 18.
Moreover, this unrealistically short time limitation is not substantially related to the State's interest in avoiding the prosecution of stale or fraudulent claims. In Gomez we recognized that the problems of proof in paternity suits "are not to be lightly brushed aside," but held that such problems do not justify a complete denial of support rights to illegitimate children. 409 U.S., at 538, 93 S.Ct., at 875. Neither do they justify a period of limitation which so restricts those rights as effectively to extinguish them. We can conceive of no evidence essential to paternity suits that invariably will be lost in only one year, nor is it evident that the passage of 12 months will appreciably increase the likelihood of fraudulent claims.
Accordingly, we conclude that the one-year period for establishing paternity denies illegitimate children in Texas the equal protection of law.
The judgment of the Texas Court of Civil Appeals is reversed, and the case is remanded for further proceedings not inconsistent with this opinion.
The appellee has set forth a number of "state interests" to justify the one-year statute of limitation, but the Court accepts only one of these as permissiblethe interest in preventing the prosecution of stale or fraudulent claims. The Court holds today that this interest will justify only those statutes of limitation that "are sufficiently long to present a real threat of loss or diminution of evidence, or an increased vulnerability to fraudulent claims." Ante, at 99. The Court elaborates:
Certainly, these circumstances demonstrate that the one-year period of limitation once provided by § 13.01 is not sufficiently long to permit either the child or the mother to assert a claim for child support; moreover, there is nothing to indicate that the period is substantially related to the asserted interest in preventing the prosecution of stale or fraudulent claims. However, it is not only birth-related circumstances that compel the conclusion that the statutory distinction in this case between legitimate and illegitimate children is unconstitutional. To begin with, the strength of the asserted state interest is undercut by the countervailing state interest in ensuring that genuine claims for child support are satisfied. The State's interest stems not only from a desire to see that "justice is done," but also from a desire to reduce the number of individuals forced to enter the welfare rolls.
By making it difficult for unwed mothers to obtain child support payments from the natural fathers of their illegitimate children, the one-year statute of limitation could only increase the burden on the state welfare system. Thus, while the State surely has an interest in preventing the prosecution of stale and fraudulent claims, at the same time it has a strong interest, peculiar to the State itself, in ensuring that genuine claims for child support are not denied.
It is also significant to the result today that a paternity suit is one of the few Texas causes of action not tolled during the minority of the plaintiff.
Of all the difficult proof problems that may arise in civil actions generally, paternity, an issue unique to illegitimate children, is singled out for special treatment. When this observation is coupled with the Texas Legislature's efforts to deny illegitimate children any significant opportunity to prove paternity and thus obtain child support, it is fair to question whether the burden placed on illegitimates is designed to advance permissible state interests.
Finally, the practical obstacles to filing suit within one year of birth could as easily exist several years after the birth of the illegitimate child. For example, if, because of the continuing relationship between the natural father and the mother, the father has provided the child with financial support for several years, the mother understandably would be unlikely or even unwilling
to jeopardize her relationship with the child's father by filing a paternity suit in order to protect her child's right to financial support at some indeterminate future date. Alternatively, the child may have lived with the father alone or his relatives for a number of years, a situation that leaves the child obviously unable to sue his father to establish paternity. The risk that the child will find himself without financial support from his natural father seems as likely throughout his minority as during the first year of his life.
Prior to filing this support suit against appellee, appellant sought financial assistance under the Aid to Families with Dependent Children program. As conditions to eligibility for such assistance, appellant was required "to assign the State any rights to support" held by the child, 42 U.S.C. 602(a)(26)(A), and "to cooperate with the State . . . in establishing the paternity of [the] child born out of wedlock with respect to whom aid [was] claimed." 42 U.S.C. 602(a)(26)(B)(i).
Traditional blood tests do not prove paternity. They prove nonpaternity, excluding from the class of possible fathers a high percentage of the general male population. H. Krause, Illegitimacy: Law and Social Policy 123-136 (1971). Thus the fact that a certain male is not excluded by these tests does not prove that he is the child's natural father, only that he is a member of the limited class of possible fathers. More recent developments in the field of blood testing have sought not only to "prove nonpaternity" but also to predict paternity with a high degree of probability. See Terasaki, Resolution by HLA Testing of 1000 Paternity Cases Not Excluded by ABO Testing, 16 J.Fam.L. 543 (1978). The proper evidentiary weight to be given to these techniques is still a matter of academic dispute. See, e.g., Jaffee, Comment on the Judicial Use of HLA Paternity Test Results and Other Statistical Evidence: Response to Terasaki, 17 J.Fam.L. 457 (1979). Whatever evidentiary rule the courts of a particular State choose to follow, if the blood test evidence does not exclude a certain male, he must thereafter turn to more conventional forms of proofevidence of lack of access to the mother, his own testimony, the testimony of othersto prove that, although not excluded by the blood test, he is not in fact the child's father. As to this latter form of proof, the State clearly has an interest in litigating claims while the evidence is relatively fresh.