Court Opinion

ID: 9686176
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 15:32:39.12223+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:18:15.719296
License: Public Domain

SNELL, Judge
(dissenting).
Where hath truth gone? To the majority, the question is irrelevant, the search passe. Res judicata has blocked the road. It matters not that an innocent man is convicted of an uncommitted act. An artificial rule of law, misapplied, grinds truth to dust.
This is a modification of child support case. The court may modify child support orders when there is a substantial change of circumstances. Iowa Code § 598.21(8) (1985). The majority concludes there is no change of circumstances here because the child’s blood type has not changed, only an improved technology has changed the result of the paternity question. This is like saying there is no change of circumstances from life to death because the blood type has not changed. But only a theologian might deign to argue that proposition. The law and the tax collector certainly recognize that a substantial change has occurred.
There is a substantial change of circumstances in this case. It is from an assumption of paternity because it could not be conclusively disproved to a scientifically certain conclusion of nonpaternity. How much more substantial a change of circumstances could there be?
The majority, however, decides that we need not bother with such disquieting evidence because the doctrine of res judicata has barricaded the door to further inquiry. This is so because the paternity issue has been settled by appellant’s stipulation to pay child support. It finds this from the language of the stipulation referring to “minor child of the parties.” From this, is extracted that “a fair reading of the order indicates the paternity issue was raised, litigated and determined.” This is supposed to satisfy the second requirement of the res judicata doctrine.
There is no support for the conclusion that the paternity issue was litigated and determined. A fair reading of the record shows that the issue was obviated. When appellant could not conclusively disprove *712paternity, he agreed to pay child support, an honorable act. But that act does not prove paternity by adjudicated fact any more than by scientific test. Issue preclusion has no application here. Compare Matter of Evans, 267 N.W.2d 48, 51 (Iowa 1978).
The claim of fairness in the majority opinion is in its reference to the dissolution order. Certainly, there is nothing fair about making a man pay child support for thirteen years to support a child conclusively not his. Little comfort for this result is garnered from the mother’s past. Her first child was born before she was married. Later, she lost in two attempts to prove that her second child was fathered by her first husband. Now she is succeeding in pinning fatherhood on appellant through a misapplication of law. Truth is vanquished.
In law, appellant is the father, but in truth he is not. Of course, res judicata is not based on truth. It is not meant to be. It is an artificial rule of law, judge made, for a laudable purpose. It provides finality to a question when for many reasons that is the preferred result. See 46 Am.Jur.2d Judgments §§ 394, 395 at 558-61. But finality on the question of child support is not required, nor is it preferred. Just the opposite is the case. The legislative directive of section 598.21(8) makes it an ongoing issue to be considered by the court when petitioned by a party to do so. A modification hearing thus has for its purpose a determination of the truth as to what parental support for a child is proper at that time. The doctrine of res judicata properly applied correlates with the statute. It was not meant to be, however, nor should it be applied, as here, to subvert the truth. The majority has misapplied the law, ignoring a sense of justice along the way.
I would reduce the child support to $0 for the reason appellant is not the father.
SACKETT, J., joins this dissent.