Opinion ID: 1617265
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: anyway, forget the facts

Text: The majority does not rest its conclusion on any factual basis to support actual residence, however. It tells us: A non-custodial parent is just as much a parent as a custodial parent and the child is still a member of his family. Consequently, the child is still a resident in the household of the non-custodial parent. We hold, therefore, that a child is a resident of both parents' households until he or she reaches the age of majority or becomes fully emancipated. Majority Opinion, p. 1011. As first noted, neither the statute nor the policy says any such thing. I thought I had carefully read Williams' briefs on appeal and in his petition for rehearing, but I found no such contention that this is the law. Also, I have read the amicus curia brief of the Mississippi Trial Lawyers Association (MTLA), and I found no such contention that this is the law. To be sure, Williams and MTLA strenuously argue that the facts of this case, however tenuous, made Junior, in fact, a resident of his father's household. They simply argue that because Junior had at times spent the night at his father's, his father contributed towards his support, he was on his father's company hospital policy, and he had left a shirt, a jacket and a vest, these were sufficient to constitute residency, in fact, in Williams' home. Neither was so bold as to suggest we create a fiction. This aroused my curiosity, and I read every authority cited in the majority opinion which the majority claims as a basis for this pronouncement (footnotes 7 and 8, infra), as well as 96 A.L.R.3rd 810 and Couch on Insurance 2d, § 45:279. These authorities likewise are conspicuously silent as to any such pronouncement of law. [11] All hold that before any court will find a child of divorced parents resides in both parents' households, there must be some basis in fact; and the basis in fact, as I have above noted, has always been far greater than here. Under the majority holding, the Legislature intended resident of the same household, Miss.Code. Ann. § 83-11-103(b), to mean that children of a divorced father, who never sees or even cares to see any of them, are, as a matter of law, residents of his household. There is absolutely nothing about this statute suggesting such a bizarre reading. This Court engenders little respect when we, as the majority now does, pronounce, as a principle of law, a statement that has no support  direct, indirect, or remote  from at least some statute or appellate court decision: when it comes out of the clear blue sky. Whether well-meaning or not, in doing so we are arrogantly, blatantly, legislating, and going beyond our lawful function. [12]