Opinion ID: 1113494
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Application of the Constitutional Provision to the Present Case and the Law in Question

Text: Amended Article 1493, in pertinent part, purports to redefine forced heirs to include only descendants of the first degree who have not attained the age of twenty-three years, or any age who, because of mental incapacity or physical infirmity, are incapable of taking care of their persons or administering their estates. In other words, the Article purports to repeal or extinguish the right of forced heirship of every child who is competent and 23 years of age on the date of his or her decedent's death. Applying the provisions of Article XII, § 5 to amended Article 1493, we conclude that the law violates the constitutional provision in several mutually involved respects. First, amended Article 1493 violates Article XII, § 5 of the 1974 Louisiana Constitution because it purports to deprive each plaintiff of his individual right as a child to an equal share of a forced portion of his decedent's estate. As we have observed, the courts, commentators, and the legislature recognized that such an individual constitutional right was created by Article IV, § 16 of the 1921 Louisiana Constitution. Thus, it was established under the former constitution that the safeguard of forced heirship embraced both the individual child's interest in dignity and equality of treatment within the family and his or her personal economic interest in inheriting a forced share of a fixed portion of the family estate. These concerns are inextricably related: a legally assured right to share equally in the legitime is an important cornerstone to an individual's relations of the most fundamental sortfamilial respect, dignity, love, and trust. Amended Article 1493 violates the plaintiffs' rights to an equal forced share of their decedent's estate and defeats their interests in treatment as equals within their family. This court recognized in Succession of Clivens, 426 So.2d 585, 593 (La.1982) (Calogero, J., on rehearing), that Article XII, § 5 of the 1974 Louisiana Constitution continues the guarantee to every child of the individual right of an equal share in a forced portion of his or her decedent's estate: Because of the unique nature of Louisiana succession law, which constitutionally requires forced heirship (La. Const. art. XII, § 5), a testator is not free to bequeath all his property to whomever he pleases if he leaves descendants. Descendants have a constitutional, as well as a statutory, right to a forced portion. Id. at 598. That each child is constitutionally guaranteed a right to equal participation in a forced portion of his decedent's succession has been acknowledged repeatedly by this and other courts. Succession of Bartie, 472 So.2d 578 (La.1985); Succession of Levy, 428 So.2d 904 (La.App. 1st Cir.1983), overruled on other grounds by Griffin v. Succession of Branch, 452 So.2d 344 (La.App. 1st Cir.1984). See also, Succession of Landry, 463 So.2d 681 (La.App. 4th Cir.1985). Furthermore, amended Civil Code article 1493, if it were to be given authoritative approval by this court, would effectively abolish forced heirship as a constitutional right for all children, even for those who are under 23 years or incompetent at the time of their decedents' deaths. For, if the legislature could by a simple majority vote disfranchise virtually all competent adult children by the present law, it could extinguish the forced heirship right of other classes of children by future laws. Evidently, therefore, the legislature would even be free to adopt a law such as the Uniform Probate Code, which provides only the surviving spouse with a forced share of the decedent's estate. Uniform Probate Code, Art II, pt. 2 (1982). For these reasons, we conclude that amended Article 1493 is invalid, not only because it violates the individual constitutional rights of the plaintiffs and other children who are 23 years of age and competent upon the date of their decedent's death, but also because it purports to abolish forced heirship as a constitutionally protected right for all children. Second, amended Article 1493 of the Civil Code is unconstitutional because it purports to abrogate the core principle of equality of heirship in the legitime among children of a family. Article IV, § 16 of the 1921 Constitution was originally adopted for the purpose of maintaining this principle against possible legislative infringement because of the public and private good that it promotes. Those who placed the provision in our state charter valued the principle of equality of heirship both as an end and as a means. And it has been so interpreted, both as a means to social and economic endsdeconcentration of wealth, deterrence of litigation, and family harmonyand as an end in itself, the expression of children's individual rights to equality of heirship in a part of their decedents' estates, reflecting the sort of society we wish to be and the dignity we wish to accord each individual. If amended Article 1493 were to be upheld as a valid law, virtually all testators would be granted complete testamentary freedom for the first time in our almost 300 year old legal history. The core principle of equality of heirship would be abolished. The practices of unjust disinheritance or discrimination, primogeniture, and entailment would be permitted. Each child would no longer be guaranteed treatment as an equal within his or her family or assured of an equitable distribution from a forced portion of his or her decedent's estate. Third, the law is unconstitutional because it abolishes or renders wholly ineffective the legal institution of forced heirship to serve the purposes intended by the constitutional limitation upon legislative power. The purpose of the prohibition on the abolishment of forced heirship was to guarantee the principle of treatment as equals in heirship in order to further important social and economic goals, viz., elimination of intra-family litigation; promotion of family harmony, strength, and solidarity; and prevention of excessive concentrations of wealth. If amended Article 1493 were to be given effect, each of these purposes of the constitutional provision would be thwarted. By the same token, each of the evils that the prohibition on the legislative power to abolish forced heirship was designed to combat would be incited and fomented, viz., family animosity and rancor that results from unjust disinheritance and unequal treatment of children; increased intra-family litigation resulting in pernicious and deleterious effects upon families; and the impairment to society that results from the concentration of wealth through the retention of family estates by only a few. The proponents of amended Article 1493 cannot dispute that the law, if given effect, would deprive the plaintiffs and virtually all adult children of their individual rights to treatment as equals in forced heirship, deprive all children of forced heirship as a constitutional right, abrogate the principle of equality of heirship, and abolish or render wholly ineffective forced heirship to serve the purposes for which the constitutional provision was adopted. Instead, they contend that the law does not abolish forced heirship because the legislature saw fit to leave intact a vestigial remnant of the former legal institution. Their argument is without merit. First, the argument is based on the false assumption that the legislature has the power to interpret the core principle and purposes of the constitutional provision differently from the intention of the drafters and the ratifiers as interpreted by this court. Clearly, the legislature is powerless to reinterpret a constitutional limitation upon its own power so as to allow it to thwart the very principle and purposes that the constitution protects against legislative infringement. Moreover, it is equally clear that the legislature is powerless to abolish by ordinary acts the individual rights of persons that this court determines to have been expressly or impliedly guaranteed by the constitution. Second, the argument is specious even on its own terms, which mistakenly construe the prohibition on the abolishment of heirship as a one-dimensional mathematical rule, rather than as a statement of constitutional objectives. The protected class which amended Article 1493 purports to set up in order to support its cramped concept of forced heirship is wholly illusory. Rarely does a child have a parent die testate before he or she reaches the age of 23; even fewer, if any, children who are incompetent or under 23 at the time of their parent's death will be disinherited and left in actual destitution. In other jurisdictions, when a parent dies testate leaving nothing to a minor, it is usually because the testator expects the surviving parent, whom he has provided for, to protect and nurture the child. Haskell, Restraints Upon the Disinheritance of Family 114 in Death, Taxes and Family Property (Halbach ed., 1977); Dunham, The Method, Process, and Frequency of Wealth Transmission at Death, 30 U. of Chi.L.Rev. 241, 257 (1963). Consequently, the minute amount of actual protection, if any, furnished by amended Article 1493 is de minimus and so insignificant that it cannot possibly be deemed to have any legal or constitutional weight. Therefore, amended Article 1493, even on its own mistaken terms, abolishes and renders defunct any form of forced heirship.