Court Opinion

ID: 9686907
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 16:11:04.117109+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:18:22.893458
License: Public Domain

V. J. Brennan, J.,
(dissenting). I must dissent. In the recent case of Serafin v Serafin, 401 Mich 629; 258 NW2d 461 (1977), the Michigan Supreme Court abolished the long-standing evidentiary rule barring a husband and wife from testifying that a child born during coverture was not the offspring of both. The present state of the law guards a child born during wedlock with a strong though rebuttable presumption of legitimacy.1 Serafin, supra, 636, Maxwell v Maxwell, 15 Mich App 607; 167 NW2d 114 (1969). In cases where the husband does successfully rebut the presumption, he would not be required to support the child. Serafin, supra, 634-635. Support would then be sought from another source.
*236Michigan’s Paternity Act, MCL 722.711 et seq.; MSA 25.491 et seq., places the obligation of support on the parents of a child born out of wedlock. The latter is defined as "a child begotten and born to any woman who was unmarried from the conception to the date of birth of the child”, MCL 722.711(a); MSA 25.491(a). (Emphasis added.) A literal reading of the above places the child in the case at bar (since the mother was married at the time of birth) outside the ambit of that act. Such a result is unacceptable. I would hold the Paternity Act operative where the mother of the child is not lawfully married to the father of the child.
The majority has most accurately pointed out the salient differences between divorce and paternity actions with one being equitable and the other being legal in nature. In order to fully protect the interests of minor children, I would hold that both actions could be brought under a single suit with the divorce action (equity) tried before the court and the paternity action (legal) tried before a jury, if demanded. (The paternity defendant would be added as a third-party defendant in the divorce action.) Such a procedure would both foster judicial economy and minimize the possibility of long delays in determining support for minor children.

 The possibility of rebutting the presumption has been greatly increased since ,Serafín allows husband and wife themselves to testify as to illegitimacy.