Court Opinion

ID: 9754022
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-28 19:38:58.376763+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:55:28.800025
License: Public Domain

PASHMAN, J.,
concurring.
I fully concur in the judgment and the opinion of the Court. The latest of multiple ceremonial marriages is entitled to a strong presumption of validity that can only be overcome by clear and convincing evidence. I write separately because I believe the Court’s opinion should rest on an additional ground.
By limiting its reasoning to the presumptive validity of the last of multiple marriages, the Court implies that under factual circumstances similar to those present here, the presumption could be overcome in some future case. That implication should not be allowed to stand.
The purpose of the Wrongful Death Act, N.J.S.A. 2A:31-1 et seq., is to provide for those dependent on the deceased at the time of his or her death. N.J.S.A. 2A:31-4. “Being remedial in nature, the statute is to be liberally construed and applied to effectuate its beneficent object.” Turon v. J & L Construction Co., 8 N.J. 543, 558 (1952). Nonetheless, our courts have been reluctant to extend recovery beyond those individuals clearly intended to be its beneficiaries. Id.; State v. Gosnell, 106 N.J.Super. 279 (App.Div.1969).
By contrast, under the Workers’ Compensation Statute, N.J. S.A. 34:15-7, recovery has been allowed in a variety of circumstances where some technical defect may have invalidated a seemingly legitimate marriage. For example, in Dawson v. Hatfield Wire & Cable Co., 59 N.J. 190 (1971), plaintiff had married the deceased in a formal marriage ceremony and lived *547with him for sixteen years, unaware that he had been previously married and never obtained a divorce. The Court held that she was a de facto spouse of the deceased and entitled to recovery under the statute. Id., at 196. Similarly, in Parkinson v. J & S Tool Co., 64 N.J. 159 (1974), plaintiff had received a legal divorce from the deceased but later resumed living with him, having been advised by a priest that the couple was still married in the eyes of the church. We held, as in Dawson, that where a person undergoes a formal marriage ceremony' and lives with the partner, believing in good faith that they are legally married, that the de facto, marriage relationship should entitle her to recover under the Worker’s Compensation statute. Id., at 167-68.
Whatever reluctance our courts may have had to construe the wrongful death statute as liberally as the worker’s compensation act should have been put to rest by the legislative relaxation of the divorce laws in 1972. The amendments to the divorce act, L. 1971, c. 212; N.J.S.A. 2A:34-1 et seg., rested on the legislative concern for the realities of the marital relationship and a public policy of allowing the dissolution of destroyed marriages. Kazin v. Kazin, 81 N.J. 85, 98 (1979). Justice Handler, writing for a unanimous Court, said that “[t]he differences in public policy wrought by this revision are fundamental.” Id. at 92. “There remains little, if any, interest in encouraging the resurrection of deceased marriages, even if [the marriage were] pronounced dead by other tribunals whose processes are not completely consistent with our own.” Id. at 98.
I would therefore hold that recovery should be allowed under the Wrongful Death Act for a de facto spouse when a technical defect may have invalidated a seemingly legitimate marriage.1 *548Persons living together following a formal marriage ceremony, in the good faith belief that they are legally married, are spouses entitled to share in wrongful death awards if they meet the statutory conditions of dependency. Making the benefits of the act available to de facto spouses who actually have been living with and dependent on the decedent serves the remedial purposes of the Wrongful Death Act.
In this case, the evidence overwhelmingly shows that Joan Newburgh entered into a ceremonial marriage with the deceased in the good faith belief that there was no impediment to the marriage. While it is true that her first marriage ended in a Mexican divorce in 1962, she had entered into a second marriage in 1970, at which time she advised the clerk of her first marriage and its termination by a Mexican divorce. She again disclosed that divorce to the court at the time her second marriage ended in an uncontested proceeding in 1973. By the time of her third marriage in 1973 to the deceased, Joan would have had no reason to doubt that she had been legally divorced from her first husband 11 years earlier.
The only possible defect to the marriage between Joan and the deceased is the possibly voidable Mexican divorce of Joan from her first husband 20 years ago. This defect is technical rather than substantial, precisely because of the change in legislative policy elaborated in Kazin. Joan Newburgh entered into a marriage ceremony with the deceased, lived with him, and in good faith believed herself to be his wife. Since there is no public policy for perpetuating in law a marriage that in fact has died, the 20 year old Mexican divorce should not be an obstacle to a wrongful death award.

Contrary to the majority’s inaccurate assertion at 540-541, my finding that Joan Newburgh is entitled to recover under the Wrongful Death Act as a de facto spouse does not mean that I would allow her to inherit property as a spouse under the intestacy statute. That is a separate legal question which is *548not before the Court at this time. The two statutes have different purposes and should be interpreted accordingly.