Court Opinion

ID: 9852428
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-24 05:30:15.099648+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:22:27.657903
License: Public Domain

Yetka, Justice
(concurring and dissenting).
The Legislature has altered the age of majority from 21 to 18. There is no vested property right in the privilege of infancy. Majority or minority is a status and not a fixed or vested right. We have so held in the case of In re Trust Under Will of Davidson, 223 Minn. 268, 26 N. W. 2d 223 (1947).
In holding as it does, the majority is really setting up two classes of people — those who after passage of the act are children of divorced parents will not be eligible for support payments; yet the children of parties divorced prior to the act will.
Myriad problems are raised by the decision, including the question of how preexisting decrees will be enforced.
Since the legislature has decided that the age of 18 is the new age of majority in Minnesota and that 18-year olds are entitled to buy and sell property and to vote in our elections, I think that settles the question raised by this appeal and I would hold that no further support payments need be made pursuant to any divorce decree beyond 18 years of age, absent disability or other conditions spelled out in previous decisions.
*497The problem of granting extended occupancy of the homestead does not exist in this case because the court clearly had the authority to do that by separate statute.
Mr. Justice Knutson took no part in the consideration or decision of this case.