Court Opinion

ID: 9695794
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-25 18:29:28.067008+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:20:16.595572
License: Public Domain

Archer, J.
(concurring). I fully join in the majority’s holding and reasoning. I write separately, however, to emphasize that while the Court’s holding is legally correct, the result, nevertheless, is harsh.
As my Brother Cavanagh notes in his dissenting opinion, many jurisdictions have held that parents have a statutory or common-law duty to support their disabled adult children. .Today, the Court holds that the Michigan Legislature, by amending the Age of Majority Act and several child support statutes, has chosen to follow a path leading in a different direction, as have many other states.
But this is not to say that a result correct in the eyes of the law also stands morally just before humanity. Parents who are capable of supporting their disabled adult children have a moral obligation to do so. With this no member of the Court disagrees.
By adopting our constitution, the people of our *641state have drawn the boundary line separating the three coequal branches of government. The branch empowered, in this particular case, to give a moral obligation the full force and effect of law is distinct from that responsible for adjudicating whether a legal duty has been breached. In the present case, as the majority intimates, the power to render into a legal duty a parent’s moral obligation to support a disabled adult child rests exclusively with the Legislature.
I join with the majority and again urge the Legislature to reconsider the child support statute in light of the Court’s opinion.