Court Opinion

ID: 9677220
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 05:46:32.060924+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:16:54.539000
License: Public Domain

The following memorandum was filed December 7, 1951:
Brown, J.
{on motion for rehearing). Counsel for respondent, in a motion for rehearing, submits that our construction of sec. 322.07, Stats., does not give adequate weight to the fact thafich. 218, Laws of 1947, by which that section was enacted, was a revisor’s bill and calls to our attention,— *459bas he did in his original brief, — sec. 370.01 (49), which reads:
“Construction of revised statutes. A revised statute is to be understood in the same sense as the original unless the change in language indicates a different meaning so clearly as to preclude judicial construction. And where the revision bill contains a note which says that the meaning of the statute to which the note relates is not changed by the revision, the note is indicative of the legislative intent.”
Counsel then urges that the former statute sec. 322.07 had been construed by this court, notably in the Estate of Sauer (1934), 216 Wis. 289, 257 N. W. 28, to mean that a child did not lose his right to inherit from his natural relatives by reason of adoption, and he submits that the language of the new statute does not indicate a different meaning so clearly as to preclude judicial construction. He also relies upon the committee comment which he interprets to say that the meaning of the statute is not changed by the revision. The comment to which counsel refers is:
“This revision is an attempt to restate briefly and clearly the meaning which the court has read into 322.07. In the Sauer Case . . . the court said that this statute ‘does not deny to the adopted child the right to inherit from its natural parents’ (p. 291), and therefore the court decided that ‘An adopted child does not lose his right to inherit from his natural parents’ (syllabus). Hence in this revision that meaning is plainly stated.”
Counsel contends that this comment is the equivalent of the note referred to in sec. 370.01 (49), Stats., and is indicative of the legislative intent. We do not think this helps him. . His argument depends upon an assumption that the prerevision law, declared by the court in Estate of Sauer, *459csupra, was that an adopted child retained the right to inherit from all natural relatives. If the legislative committee had thought the Sauer Case said that, surely its note would have stated that the court had read that meaning into the statute; and if the committee or the legislature wanted to carry that meaning into the revised statute it would have made the exception in the statute read: “(4) The adopted child does not lose the right to inherit from his natural relatives,” or something to like effect. But, instead, the committee comment, stating its understanding of our decisions, stops with inheritance from parents and its revised statute makes inheritance from “parents,” not “natural relatives” the sole exception (material to this case) to the changed status of the adopted child. The committee comment, so far from helping respondent, destroys her basic assumption that the law before the revision, as understood by the legislature and reiterated by the revision, included natural relatives in addition to parents.
Then, as we said in our principal opinion herein, the revised sec. 322.07, Stats., was enacted which, while accepting our declaration of the law as far as we had declared it, restricted us from further extension, logical as such- extension might be, by making inheritance, from natural parents the sole exception, material to this question, to the changed status of the adopted child. We consider that we have strictly complied with the rule of.sec. 370.01 (49), to which counsel has referred us, in our construction of a revised statute.
Counsel raises a question which is not material to the decision of the principal case nor of the present motion but which, nevertheless, is of concern. He submits that the revision has not changed the law as previously interp.reted by the court. In Estate of Bradley (1925), 185 Wis. 393, *459d201 N. W. 973, we denied to an adopted child the right to inherit from an intestate brother of the adoptive parent. Since we now hold that the adopted child has no right of inheritance from its natural relatives, other than its parents, and the rule of the Bradley decision is unchanged by the revision, so that the child does not inherit from his adoptive relatives, except parents, his rights of inheritance have been very seriously diminished by an adoption which is designed to benefit him. We cannot commit ourselves to an interpretation of the revised statute in reference to cases which are not before us, but there is much force in the argument that the statute in its present form does thus limit the intestate decedents from whom the adopted child may inherit to the two sets of parents. The remedy does not lie with the court, which is bound by the statutes as they exist, but the attention of the legislature may well be directed- to an appropriate provision for heirship to prevent such inadvertent injustice.
Appellant did not file a brief on the motion for rehearing.
By the Court. — Motion denied without costs.