Court Opinion

ID: 9628800
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 09:32:16.961121+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:07:11.628616
License: Public Domain

ERWIN, Justice,
dissenting.
Assuming, as the majority does, that the funds which are to be allocated in this case represent a wrongful death settlement, then I agree with the majority insofar as it holds that
[ajnalysis of the Alaska Wrongful Death Statute demonstrates that the legislature intended that damages in a wrongful death case are to be assessed according to the actual losses of each qualified surviving beneficiary.
Further, I am in agreement with the majority that
[I]n making allocations of wrongful death settlements . . ., we approve the [rule in its general outlines that] appropriate proportions can be arrived at by totaling the number of years of reasonably expectable dependency or loss suffered by all beneficiaries,
thereafter using that figure as a denominator in calculating each individual’s percentage of the award.
However, I depart from the reasoning of the majority to the extent that it approvingly allows a presumption founded upon the father’s legal obligation to support his children to control on the isshe of “actual loss” when figuring the beneficiary children’s reasonable expectable years of dependency or loss. To set such a presumption up even as a rebuttable one, which the majority does here, is unnecessary and hinders the function of what the court in fact should be undertaking, the ascertainment of actual loss on the part of the individual children. Further, to use the age of majority as a cut-off period, and to say that after this time the children should expect nothing in the way of support from their father, or that they after such time suffer no loss as the result of his wrongful death, is to fly squarely in the face of common sense and general human • experience.
Experience tells us that often children who have been placed in the custody of one parent after a marital separation never have an opportunity to come to know the other parent until after such children have left the household of the custodial parent. Thus, to examine the relationship of the deceased with his children while they were living with the custodial mother, and to have the terms of that relationship control on the question of future loss, is to me illogical and arbitrary. It would seem much more probable that at the age of majority the children and father might come to know each other well for the first time, and accordingly the father’s interest in his children would increase. Additional*731ly, other considerations not present before emerge at the age of majority. Possible educational pursuits by the children which before were not considerations might well interest the father, and his participation in financially assisting the child cannot be ruled out.
I am also troubled by the fact that today’s holding has set up the presumption of majority as a vehicle to cut off dependency insofar as the children are concerned, but has set up no corresponding presumption for the wife. Perhaps statistical evidence should be utilized in calculating the wife’s chances of remarriage, and thus the loss of her legal right to dependency. Such evidence could then be utilized as a presumption as rational, I believe, as the presumption of majority operative against the children.
Finally, to allow the presumption to be adjusted upon a showing of the children of
evidence of circumstances indicating a longer period of dependency or evidence furnishing a basis for finding a continued expectation of pecuniary contributions beyond the age of majority
is to unfairly place on the children a burden which cannot be realistically met. How could a child of two years demonstrate the intention of a deceased parent to financially participate in an educational plan which is to occur sixteen years later? What evidence of circumstances could demonstrate such an intention?
On the facts before us the court has held that the existence of a valid four-month marriage conclusively demonstrates the deceased’s intentions to support his current wife, yet the majority cuts off any expectancy by his two children upon their reaching the age of legal majority. Such an apportionment of the deceased’s estate to his immediate family seems to me to be justified nowhere in the record.1

. Appellee herein received social security benefits almost equal to those received by the children, workmen’s compensation benefits of $13,795 which must likely be repaid, a cash advance of $35,000, and final payments of $130,349.