Opinion ID: 2452405
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: The Trial Court Had Jurisdiction to Order Support For an Over-Eighteen-Year-Old Child Who Was Incompetent

Text: The majority says that section (b) of article 14.05 could not become operative without a prior order for support under section (a), that without an order of a court prior to a child's reaching eighteen there can be none thereafter. I find nothing in section 14.05 which makes the duty in section (b) conditioned upon a prior order under section (a). Support for Diana is now denied because the judgment which provided support under article 14.05(a) has become final, according to the court's opinion. She would have been better off if her father had not voluntarily provided her support. There was no reason to litigate what the father acknowledged was his duty, so time passed until Diana became eighteen and was still incompetent. One does not lose his statutory rights merely because they are not asserted in limine in the divorce action. In Slattery v. Hatmaker, 255 S.W.2d 334 (Tex.Civ.App. 1953, no writ), a divorce was granted in which no mention was made of a child. Judge Norvell writing: Appellant contends that the trial court was without authority to order him to pay child support money, in that such order was in the nature of an attempt to amend the original decree of divorce which had theretofore become final.       However, this Court has held that the fact that the original divorce decree failed to award support money did not deprive the court of authority to thereafter do so. Tipton v. Lester, Tex.Civ. App., 178 S.W.2d 580, following Townsend v. Townsend, Tex.Civ.App., 115 S.W.2d 769. The judgment concerning support was not final after Diana reached eighteen. The majority cites three cases for its holding that the divorce decree was final. Ex parte Williams, 420 S.W.2d 135 (Tex.1967), and McCullough v. McCullough, 483 S.W.2d 869 (Tex.Civ.App.1972, no writ), concerned normal children and of course there was no duty to support after age eighteen and the judgments were final. Ex parte Hatch, 410 S.W.2d 773 (Tex.1967), however, is precedent against the majority statement of the rule. I respectfully state that the majority opinion takes quotations out of context and omits the following controlling facts: The divorce in that case was granted on October 28, 1958. It ordered support for two children, one of whom was incompetent. At that time article 4639a-1 providing for support for incompetent children over eighteen had not been enacted. Quoting the relevant facts from the opinion itself, At the date of divorce Carna Mary was 16 years old. At the date Article 4639a-1 became effective she was 19 years old.  (emphasis added). The incompetent child, in Hatch , was already more than eighteen years old when the statute requiring support for an over-eighteen incompetent child first became effective. The quotations in the majority opinion take on a different meaning in this factual context. The supreme court considered these facts important enough to mention them four times saying: The question presented is whether the statute (art. 4639a-1) applies to an attempted modification of a prior divorce decree where the child in question was already 18 or more years of age at the time the statute became effective. .. These cases do not hold that a child support order may be modified and thereafter enforced by contempt when the court has lost continuing jurisdiction thereof before enactment of the statute (article 4639a-1).... We therefore hold that Article 4639a-1 does not confer jurisdiction upon the trial court to modify support orders to conform to its provisions, and require and enforce support payments for children requiring custodial care who were already 18 years of age when the statute became effective. .. The Court of Civil Appeals held that the trial court had jurisdiction of the subject matter of the motion, under the provisions of Article 4639a-1, without mentioning the fact that the child in question must have been at least 18 years of age when the statute became effective on November 6, 1961. (emphasis added). The holding in Hatch was that a parent could not enforce by contempt a failure to provide support for an incompetent child who was more than eighteen years old before the effective date of article 4639a-1 which for the first time established such a duty. The court made this clear by disapproving Cuellar v. Cuellar, 406 S.W.2d 510 (Tex.Civ.App.1966, no writ), which was a case in which the child was already nineteen when the statute became effective. In Hatch and Cuellar , there was no statutory duty in being when the child reached age eighteen. The application of article 4639a-1 required a retroactive application of a duty which did not exist when the child reached eighteen. In this case, article 4639a-1 was already effective in 1963 at the time of the divorce. Diana Red was then fourteen years old. The statutory duty existed before age eighteen and continued thereafter. There has never been any contention that the duty of support under either article 4639a-1 or the Family Code had to be retroactively applied. In re Hatch has been misread and misapplied. I would reverse the judgments of the courts below which dismissed this cause for want of jurisdiction, order the cause reinstated upon the docket of the trial court, and remand it for trial. STEAKLEY, McGEE and YARBROUGH, JJ., join in this dissent.