Court Opinion

ID: 9699191
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-25 20:12:56.670883+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:20:47.350539
License: Public Domain

MESCHKE, Justice,
concurring specially.
I concur cautiously, with reservations.
I fully concur that the county court had concurrent authority to determine paternity for inheritance. See also C.L.W. v. M.J., 254 N.W.2d 446 (N.D.1977).
*367I am uncertain whether the limitations in the Uniform Parentage Act bar inheritance. I am also uncertain whether those limitations are constitutional, if they do apply.
Regrettably, my doubts arise from assessment and research apart from adversarial development of the issues. As Chief Justice Erickstad mercifully puts it, “Duane has not responded to [the] additional arguments” by Svend and John Soren-sen, as appellees. No reply brief was filed for appellant.
This court has become increasingly careful about deciding issues without the benefit of adequate adversarial presentations. For example, see Gravning v. Gravning, 389 N.W.2d 621, 623 (N.D.1986). Nevertheless, a plausible position put forward on appeal which is uncontradicted is easy to adopt. Unfortunately, there is risk in adopting an inadequately developed position — not merely hazard to the lawyer who is indifferent to the appellate process, but injury to the law itself. Thus, while there is enough plausibility in the limitations position advanced by the Sorensen brothers to allow my concurrence in spite of doubts, I believe it may be useful for future cases to voice my reservations.
My uncertainty about whether the limitations in the Uniform Parentage Act apply to inheritance stems from the Act itself. While the applicable section, if any, is NDCC § 14-17-05(l)(b), part of § 14-17-06 says:
“Sections 14-17-05 and 14-17-06 do not extend the time within which a right of inheritance or a right to a succession may be asserted beyond the time provided by law relating to distribution and closing of decedents’ estates or to the determination of heirship, or otherwise.”
The Commissioners’ Comment to the equivalent section of the Uniform Parentage Act says:
“The three year provision stated in the first sentence of this Section will serve as an admonition that paternity actions should be brought promptly. In effect, however, this Section provides for a twenty-one-year statute of limitations, except that a late paternity action does not affect laws relating to distribution and closing of decedents’ estates or to the determination of heirship.” (Emphasis supplied.) Parentage Act § 7, 9A U.L.A. 596 (1979).
A child has no claim for an inheritance until the death of a parent. There is a separate time limitation expressed for decedents’ estates in NDCC § 30.1-12-08. The cross-reference to the Uniform Parentage Act in our amended version of the Uniform Probate Code at § 30.1-04-09 (“... the parent and child relationship may be established under the Uniform Parentage Act.”) does not explicitly incorporate time limitations. The Uniform Parentage Act itself seems to disclaim its limitations applying to inheritance. Because limitations of the Uniform Parentage Act raise constitutional concerns, an interpretation borrowing those limitations for the Uniform Probate Code would ordinarily be avoided. These factors raise doubts.
If a Uniform Parentage Act limitation is applied to inheritance, it may be unconstitutional today. In Reed v. Campbell, 476 U.S. 852, 106 S.Ct. 2234, 90 L.Ed.2d 858 (1986), the United States Supreme Court unanimously held unconstitutional a statute which barred inheritance by a child born out of wedlock and not legitimized by the subsequent invalid marriage of his parents. In Pickett v. Brown, 462 U.S. 1, 103 S.Ct. 2199, 76 L.Ed.2d 372 (1983), the United States Supreme Court unanimously held unconstitutional a Tennessee statute imposing a two-year limitations period on paternity and child support actions on behalf of some illegitimate children because it denied them the equal protection of the laws guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment, notwithstanding that it permitted such suits for some illegitimate children until their 18th birthday. In Mills v. Habluetzel, 456 U.S. 91, 102 S.Ct. 1549, 71 L.Ed.2d 770 (1982), a unanimous Supreme Court held unconstitutional a Texas statute which limited a suit against a natural parent for support of an illegitimate child to one year from birth. But, importantly, Justice O’Connor wrote a separate concurrence, *368joined by four other justices, to make it plain that the court was not approving a recent amendment to the statute extending the limitation to four years and to emphasize that “the factors used in deciding that the one-year statute of limitation cannot withstand an equal protection challenge [indicate] that longer periods of limitation for paternity suits also may be unconstitutional.” 456 U.S. at 106, 102 S.Ct. at 1558.
These decisions illustrate the pronounced trend of equal protection analyses rejecting statutes disfavoring illegitimate children. Simply stated, “[t]here should be legal equality for all children regardless of the status of the parents.” 1
For these reasons, I am uncertain about the correctness of today’s decision. Nevertheless, I concur because the ruling is plausible, based upon uncontradicted argument, however dubious.

. Statement from the minutes of the Social Welfare Committee of the North Dakota House of Representatives when it considered the Uniform Parentage Act in 1975.