Court Opinion

ID: 9598568
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 01:09:57.144985+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:49:49.713009
License: Public Domain

Dolliver, J.
(dissenting) — The question here is whether the word "child" or "children" includes unadopted stepchildren. Most jurisdictions which hold that unadopted stepchildren cannot bring an action for wrongful death rely on a strict construction of wrongful death and survival statutes because they are in derogation of the common law. See Annot., Action for Death of Stepparent by or for Benefit of Stepchild, 68 A.L.R.3d 1220 (1976); Steed v. Imperial Airlines, 12 Cal. 3d 115, 524 P.2d 801, 115 Cal. Rptr. 329 (1974); Marshall v. Macon Sash, Door & Lumber Co., 103 Ga. 725, 30 S.E. 571 (1898); Flores v. King, 13 Md. App. 270, 282 A.2d 521 (1971). Until this case, we had *49taken a different approach and held that this state's wrongful death statute, because it is remedial in nature, is to be liberally construed to accomplish the purposes behind its enactment. Cook v. Rafferty, 200 Wash. 234, 93 P.2d 376 (1939); Johnson v. Ottomeier, 45 Wn.2d 419, 275 P.2d 723 (1954); Gray v. Goodson, 61 Wn.2d 319, 378 P.2d 413 (1963); Armijo v. Wesselius, 73 Wn.2d 716, 440 P.2d 471 (1968).
What is the purpose of wrongful death statutes? It is to provide a remedy whereby the family or relatives of the deceased, those who might naturally have expected maintenance or assistance from him had he lived, may recover compensation from the wrongdoer commensurate with the loss sustained. Hedrick v. Ilwaco Ry. & Nav. Co., 4 Wash. 400, 30 P. 714 (1892); Note, 44 Wash. L. Rev. 523 (1969). In this case, decedent's stepchildren might naturally have expected maintenance or assistance from him had he lived because RCW 26.16.205 requires stepparents to support their stepchildren. This legal obligation imposed upon the stepparent creates a reciprocal right of stepchildren to maintain a wrongful death action to recover compensation from the wrongdoer commensurate with the loss sustained.
In Armijo v. Wesselius, supra, we interpreted the word "child" in the wrongful death statutes to include unadopted illegitimate children of the decedent. The majority dismisses Armijo with the observation that "an illegitimate child is a child of its parent". But this is exactly the point. The court in Armijo rejected the kind of narrow construction of the law urged by the majority here and by the dissent in Armijo. While the narrow view might well have fitted the outlook and mores of Victoria's England, it hardly comports with either the realities of or the appropriate value systems of today.
In Armijo we said, "Society is becoming progressively more aware that children deserve proper care, comfort, and protection even if they are illegitimate." Armijo, at 721. The modern view is to look to the welfare of children and to protect them from consequences over which they have no *50control. Just as they do not ask for the status of illegitimacy, neither do they become stepchildren through their own devices. While in 1846 when Lord Campbell's Act, the original wrongful death statute, was framed, a divorce was a scandal and stepchildren were a rarity, today the former is accepted and the latter are commonplace.
The trend in the law is toward according stepchildren rights equal to those of natural children. In In re Estate of Bordeaux, 37 Wn.2d 561, 594, 225 P.2d 433, 26 A.L.R.2d 249 (1950), we said that the modern tendency has been, and rightly so, to assimilate the stepchild to the natural child. See also In re Estate of Ehler, 53 Wn.2d 679, 335 P.2d 823 (1959); State v. Gillaspie, 8 Wn. App. 560, 507 P.2d 1223 (1973). Our descent and distribution statutes allow inheritance from a stepparent in order to avoid escheat of property. RCW 11.04.095. The industrial insurance laws afford benefit rights to stepchildren and stepparents. RCW 51.08-.030, .050. Regulations of the Department of Social and Health Services treat children who live with a stepparent the same as children who live with both natural parents for purposes of distribution of Aid to Families with Dependent Children. See WAC 388-24-135. The legislature's policy most clearly expressed in RCW 26.16.205, but also contained in other statutes and administrative regulations, is to expand the rights of stepchildren. Given this policy, as well as the broad remedial purposes of RCW 4.20.020 and 4.20.060, the same liberal interpretation placed in the statutes in 1968 which allowed illegitimate children the benefits of a wrongful death action should be made in this case to extend the same benefits to stepchildren.
I dissent.
Wright, Brachtenbach, and Horowitz, JJ., concur.