Court Opinion

ID: 9565971
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 19:31:01.760072+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:18:25.311700
License: Public Domain

Deen, Presiding Judge,
concurring specially.
While concurring fully with the majority opinion, since this appears to be a case of first impression as to a child’s independent right of de-legitimation, additional comments are appropriate.
Normally an unemancipated child may not sue his parents. Maddox v. Queen, 150 Ga. App. 408, 411 (257 SE2d 918) (1979). An exception to this rule obtains where a parent wilfully injures the child. The instant case involves a situation where a husband and wife obtained a divorce. A joint agreement was entered, stipulating the name of their offspring, and provisions were made for support of their child, all approved by the court. As I understand the appellant’s position, any child in the state, including the party in the case sub judice, has an independent right of action at any time to de-legitimate, disaffiliate, disaffirm and divorce himself from his family by contending that his real father or mother is a third party, so long as a guardian ad litem or an attorney has not been appointed to protect the child’s interests in a previous proceeding during which the child’s parents were identified. This could mean that any or all of the adopted children in this state would have the right to go to court and have the identity of their biological parents revealed to them.
The public policy of Georgia has always encouraged family unity. Unemancipated children have not been allowed to sue their parents, because this disrupts family unity. If appellant’s position is correct, *471all children throughout the state would have a type of bill of rights, at any time, to renounce family harmony in their seeking of an independent action for de-legitimation status after many years of living with their purported parents. This would create family disharmony, disunity, and unrest, and I believe that it would violate the public policy of this state. Our court should liberally construe efforts toward legitimation but not in sanctioning de-legitimation.