Opinion ID: 786538
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Juliet and Piers are Netting's Natural, Biological Children

Text: 11 The Act defines child broadly to include any child or legally adopted child of an individual, as well as a stepchild who was the insured person's stepchild for at least nine months before the insured person died, and a grandchild or stepgrandchild of the insured person under certain circumstances. See 42 U.S.C. § 416(e). Courts and the SSA have interpreted the word child used in the definition of child to mean the natural, or biological, child of the insured. See, e.g., Weinberger v. Salfi, 422 U.S. 749, 781 n. 12, 95 S.Ct. 2457, 45 L.Ed.2d 522 (1975) (noting that a natural or adopted child of a wage earner need not meet the nine-month time requirement to which stepchildren are subject); Tsosie v. Califano, 630 F.2d 1328, 1333 (9th Cir.1980) (Under § 416(e), the term `child' includes a person's natural children and his legally adopted children.); 20 C.F.R. § 404.354 (stating that a claimant may be entitled to benefits as [an insured person's] child, i.e., as a natural child, legally adopted child, stepchild, grandchild, stepgrandchild, or equitably adopted child). 12 The Commissioner argues and the district court held that child is further defined by 42 U.S.C. §§ 416(h)(2), (3), and that Juliet and Piers cannot be considered the children of Netting unless they meet the requirements of one of these provisions. 13 These sections were added to the Act to provide various ways in which children could be entitled to benefits even if their parents were not married or their parentage was in dispute. They have no relevance to the issue before us. As the Fourth Circuit explained [a]n illegitimate claimant may establish that he is a `child' for eligibility purposes under either of three critical provisions of the Act in § 416(h). McMillian by McMillian v. Heckler, 759 F.2d 1147, 1150(4th Cir.1985) (emphasis added). 14 Until 1965, § 416(h)(2) provided the sole means by which illegitimates could establish entitlement to benefits as dependent children, with § (h)(2)(A) the primary vehicle. Under that provision, an illegitimate claimant could establish entitlement to benefits by proving his entitlement to inherit from the insured wage earner as a child under the intestate succession law of the state of the insured's domicile. In 1965, § (h)(3)(C) was added specifically to provide other means by which entitlement might be established. 15 Id. at 1152. 16 Under the current version of § 416(h), a claimant whose parentage is disputed is deemed to be the child of an insured individual if: (1) the child would be entitled to take an intestate share of the individual's property under the laws of the state in which the individual resided at death; (2) the child's parents went through a marriage ceremony resulting in a purported marriage between them that, but for a legal impediment unknown to them at the time, would have been a valid marriage; (3) the deceased wage earner acknowledged the claimant as his or her child in writing; (4) the deceased wage earner, before dying, had been decreed by a court to be the parent of the claimant; (5) the deceased wage earner, before dying, had been ordered by a court to contribute to the support of the claimant because the claimant was his or her child; or (6) the insured individual is shown by evidence satisfactory to the Commissioner to have been the parent of the claimant and to have been living with or contributing to the support of the claimant at the time that he died. See 42 U.S.C. §§ 416(h)(2), (3). 17 Although these provisions offer means of determining whether an applicant is the child ... of a fully or currently insured individual, id. at § 416(h)(2)(A), when parentage is disputed, nothing in the statute suggests that a child must prove parentage under § 416(h) if it is not disputed. We conclude that these provisions do not come into play for the purposes of determining whether a claimant is the child of a deceased wage earner unless parentage is disputed. 4 In this case, the Commissioner concedes that Juliet and Piers are Netting's biological children. Therefore, we conclude that the district court erred by holding that Juliet and Piers are not Netting's children for the purposes of the Act. See, e.g., Tsosie, 630 F.2d at 1333(noting that child includes any biological child of the insured wage earner).