Court Opinion

ID: 9754593
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-28 20:06:23.317306+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:27:55.193665
License: Public Domain

BRODERICK, C.J.,
concurring specially. I join the majority’s response to the certified question because I agree with its conclusion that a reasonable reading of RSA 561:1, coupled with the majority’s recitation of the statute’s purpose, establishes that Christine C. Eng Khabbaz is not the “surviving” issue of Rumzi Brian Khabbaz. I concur, however, with some reluctance. I feel particularly confined by our construction of the word “surviving,” as I believe it frustrates a critical purpose of the statute, one different from that articulated in the majority opinion. I write separately to respectfully urge the legislature to examine, within the context of the state’s intestacy statute, the confluence of new, ever-expanding birth technologies and the seemingly arcane language and presumptions attendant to the settlement of decedents’ estates. I believe that with time and further technological advances, this confluence will engulf more and more of our state’s families and the children produced as a consequence of such advances.
Pursuant to RSA 21:20, Christine is clearly the issue of Mr. Khabbaz (“The word ‘issue,’ as applied to the descent of estates, shall include all the lawful lineal descendants of the ancestor.” (emphasis added)). Citing RSA 21:20, Christine’s mother contends that RSA 561:1, 11(a) includes her daughter as Mr. Khabbaz’s issue. In response to this contention, the majority correctly notes that RSA 21:1 precludes the use of the statutory definition of “issue” in the construction of RSA 561:1, 11(a) when such construction “would be inconsistent with the manifest intent of the legislature or repugnant to the context of the same statute.” The majority then concludes that including all “issue” under RSA 561:1, 11(a) “would *807undermine the finality and orderly distribution that the legislature clearly contemplated.”
While I agree that an expansive reading of “issue” within the context of RSA 561:1, 11(a) could serve to delay the final settlement of intestate estates in some cases, I believe that it is important to recognize a critical purpose of the intestacy statute; that is, the protection of an intestate decedent’s spouse and issue and the preservation of wealth for them, pursuant to principles of equity and equality. See, e.g., 23 Am. JUR. 2d Descent and Distribution §4 (2002); see also Woodward v. Commissioner of Social Sec., 760 N.E.2d 257, 264-65 (Mass. 2002) (“[W]hether posthumously conceived genetic children may enjoy inheritance rights under the intestacy statute implicates three powerful State interests: the best interests of children, the State’s interest in the orderly administration of estates, and the reproductive rights of the genetic parent.”). This protective purpose has also been recognized by our probate observers. See 11 C. DeGrandpre, New Hampshire Practice, Probate Law And Procedure § 54-9, at 93 (3d. ed. 2001) (“[B]ecause the word ‘issue’ as used in the intestacy statute (RSA 561:1) has been statutorily defined to mean ‘all lawful lineal descendants’ of a decedent (RSA 21:20), after bom children come within this broad definition and are protected and included as takers under the intestacy laws.” (emphasis added)).
In rejecting the application of the definition of issue in RSA 21:20 to RSA 561:1,11(a), the majority notes that “on a practical level, children may be conceived posthumously several years after an individual’s death, and waiting for the potential birth of a posthumously conceived child could tie up estate distributions indefinitely.” While I agree that inordinate delay in the settlement of intestate estates would be against the intent of the legislature, I add two observations. First, RSA 561:1 may reasonably be read to already include an internal timeframe for the distribution of an intestate estate, beyond which a posthumous child, conceived either before or after the death of the parent, would not take. Specifically, the statute provides that:
The real estate and personal estate of every person deceased, not devised or bequeathed ... and personally remaining in the hands of the administrator on settlement of his or her account, shall descend or be distributed by decree of the probate court.
(Emphasis added.) As such, the statute could reasonably be read to provide for posthumous children to take their intestate share as “issue” when born before the final settlement of the administrator’s account. Such a reading of the statute could serve to preserve the finality and orderly *808distribution of intestate estates contemplated by the legislature. Second, and more important, such a statutory construction would serve to protect posthumous children from taking nothing under a statute intended, at least in part, to protect the issue of the intestate.
To construe the intestacy statute as we have done today essentially leaves an entire class of posthumous children unprotected under the intestacy statute. Such a result is undesirable, although seemingly required under the present statute. The resulting anomaly in our holding is underscored by the clear expression of the legislature’s intent in two related statutes.
Within the context of wills, RSA 551:10 provides:
Every child born after the decease of the testator, and every child or issue of a child of the deceased not named or referred to in his will, and who is not a devisee or legatee, shall be entitled to the same portion of the estate, real and personal, as he would be if the deceased were intestate.
The statute creates a rule of law, not merely a presumption, that pretermission is accidental, in order to prevent a mistake or unintended failure by the testator to remember the natural object of his or her bounty. In re Estate of Treloar, 151 N.H. 460, 462 (2004). The statute and its predecessors have served, for at least 185 years, to protect children, including posthumous children. See Eyre v. Storer, 37 N.H. 114, 122-23 (1858). Had Mr. Khabbaz executed a will, and neither mentioned nor referred to Christine, she presumably would take an intestate share of his estate, even if her taking would defeat other provisions of his will. Id. at 123 (“Being born after the death of her father, and in no way named or provided for in his will, she must have inherited all his property, as if he had died intestate; in other words, [his] will would have been wholly inoperative.”). In the instant case, Mr. Khabbaz did not execute a will, but his intentions to have and to provide for his child were clear. Our reading of RSA 561:1, however, leaves Christine unprotected and ignores what we know to be his intent. See In re Estate of Kirkpatrick, 77 P.3d 404, 412 (Wyo. 2003) (“The general purpose of intestacy statutes is to distribute a decedent’s estate upon their death in a pattern that would closely represent the distribution the decedent would have chosen had he manifested his intent through the use of a will.”).
Far more recently, the legislature enacted RSA chapter 168-B, which comprises a statutory scheme that recognizes artificial insemination, in vitro fertilization, preembryo transfer, and surrogacy procedures. The statutory chapter became effective in 1991, prior to both the 1998 and 2003 legislative amendments to RSA 561:1. Our rules of statutory construction *809and our decision today lead to an apparently unintended result — that although assisted reproductive technologies are recognized and accepted under RSA chapter 168-B, a class of children who are the fruit of that technology will have fewer rights and protections than other children when intestacy is involved. See Woodward, 760 N.E.2d at 265.
Finally, we have rejected Christine’s mother’s argument that we adopt the reasoning of the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts in Woodward v. Commissioner of Social Security. While I agree that Woodward is distinguishable from the instant case because of a difference in our statutory schemes, that difference centers on a “posthumous children” provision in the Commonwealth’s intestacy statute. Specifically, “[p]osthumous children shall be considered as living at the death of their parent.” Mass. Gen. Laws Ann. ch. 190, § 8 (2004). The Massachusetts statute does not distinguish between those posthumous children conceived before, and those conceived after the death of the parent. In virtually all other respects, Woodward and the case at hand are the same.
The certified question from the United States District Court for the District of Massachusetts asked if a child conceived, through sperm banking and artificial insemination between a husband and wife, after the husband’s death, was entitled to take under the Commonwealth’s intestacy laws. Woodward, 760 N.E.2d at 259. The Supreme Judicial Court recognized that the posthumous children provision did not, on its face, limit the definition of posthumous children to those in útero at the time of the parent’s death. Id. at 262. The court then looked to the purpose of the provision (“to preserve wealth for consanguineous descendants,” id. at 264), and balanced the state interests of the best interests of children, the orderly administration of estates, and the reproductive rights of the genetic parent. Id. at 265-70. The court concluded that in certain limited circumstances, posthumously conceived children could take under the Commonwealth’s intestacy statute. Those limited circumstances existed where a genetic relationship is demonstrated between the child and the decedent, and where the decedent affirmatively consented to both posthumous conception and the support of any resulting child. Id. at 259, 272. Even when such circumstances existed, however, the court noted that certain time limitations might preclude commencing a claim for succession rights on behalf of a posthumously conceived child. Id.
While I concur with the majority opinion, I respectfully urge the legislature to examine Woodward v. Commissioner of Social Security, the pertinent statutes of those states cited in the majority opinion, and the few other cases that have addressed related situations, in deciding the optimum course of action. See, e.g., In re Estate of Kolacy, 753 A.2d 1257 (N.J. Super. Ct. Ch. Div. 2000) (posthumously conceived children declared *810legal heirs of deceased parent under state’s intestacy law in order to pursue survivor benefits with Social Security Administration). I believe that the parents of this state who avail themselves of the assisted reproductive technologies outlined in RSA chapter 168-B, the children produced through such technologies, the parents’ lineal descendants, and those charged with the administration of intestate estates deserve such legislative focus.