Court Opinion

ID: 9684332
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 13:54:01.232436+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:17:55.010750
License: Public Domain

Wendell L. Griffen, Judge, concurring. I agree with the result and reasoning announced in the principal opinion authored by Judge Bird and file a separate concurrence to address two concerns. First, as author of our decision in Golden v. Golden, 57 Ark. App. 143, 942 S.W.2d 282 (1997), I want to highlight the differences between that case and the one at hand. In Golden, we held that a trial judge did not err in a divorce proceeding by refusing to find the wife estopped from denying her husband’s paternity of a minor child born during the marriage under the doctrine of res judicata. Golden involved a challenge to paternity made by the wife during the context of the divorce action itself. Unlike in this case, where the trial court has already entered a decree finding that the parties had a minor child born of the marriage, awarded child custody, and ordered payment of child support, in Golden there was no previous court finding — accurate or not — that the child was born of the marriage. As such, the doctrine of res judicata did not apply. We are confronted with a much different scenario in this case. My second reason for fifing this concurring opinion relates to the candid and, in my view, compelling observation made by Judge VanAusdall, the trial judge in this case. The holding, tone and tenor of OCSE v. Williams, 338 Ark. 347, 995 S.W.2d 338 (1999), suggests that this type fraud is tolerated in Arkansas, as well as other jurisdictions, on some public policy basis that children of such marriages are entided to be supported. To this Court, it is bad policy to reward an adulterous, deceitful, nefarious, lying litigant to saddle an unsuspecting man with such a burden, but it appears to be the law, and this Court is obliged to enforce it, as distasteful as it is. It is not as though the child will remain in blissful ignorance of the true fact. Here, her mother has filed an affidavit, admitting her pegured testimony, and named the true father. Appellee alleged in her divorce complaint and testified during the uncontested divorce proceeding that she was “expecting a child of the marriage.” Appellant did not contest the divorce and apparently did not controvert the allegation of paternity in the divorce complaint despite having been served with process. Thus, the divorce decree declares: “[t]he parties have one (1) minor child, namely: Julia Renee Graves, born July 20, 1988,” and ordered appellant to pay child support. As the principal opinion states, this case is not controlled by Rule 60(c) of the Arkansas Rules of Civil Procedure, but by Rule 55(c), the rule that governs default judgments. Rule 60(c) has ended the intrinsic/extrinsic fraud distinction for vacating judgments tainted by fraud so that litigants in contested matters can obtain relief. What I do not understand is why we apparendy recognize the value of allowing truth to prevail over fraud in contested matters so as to permit judgments procured through fraud to be vacated under Rule 60(c), but have not amended Rule 55 to permit similar treatment for default judgments. Uncontested divorces are not unusual, nor do they indicate lack of interest in the judicial proceeding by the uncontesting litigants. In some instances, persons of meager income may decide that engaging in a legal contest will take money away from other more pressing needs. Litigants who do not respond to divorce complaints involving allegations of paternity and petitions for child support may, as shown in this case, not know that they have countervailing grounds for divorce, let alone reasons to contest paternity. Julia Graves and other children in her situation deserve child support, to be sure. However, they deserve to be supported by the men responsible for their existence, not men deceived by their mothers so the mothers can collect child-support payments. We do not allow perpetrators of fraud to profit from their deceit in any other area of the law. I see no reason why we should make an exception in family law. The idea expressed in Williams that we should not look behind a trial court’s determination of paternity because we want to preserve the relationship between children and their fathers is well-intentioned, but unpersuasive. I suspect that some men who discover that they have been the victims of adultery and deceit have established nurturing relationships with their putative children and will desire to maintain those relationships. In Golden we affirmed the trial court’s decision recognizing visitation rights for the stepfather precisely for that reason. But there is another concern we must not ignore. Men who discover they have been tricked into paying child support will not forget that they have been tricked when it comes to dealing with the children they are compelled to support. The law can take a man’s money by court order, however, no court can force a man to love a child he knows is not his own. Refusing to relieve men from the obligation to pay child support for children they never sired, but were tricked into acknowledging, does not turn them into fathers. It simply makes the law the oppressive ally of fraudulent mothers. The consequences of following Williams are troubling in another respect. Men who are compelled to pay child support based on court orders that declare them fathers of children they did not sire may wonder, with justification, how they can obtain financial reimbursement for the money they lost. If they sue the women whose allegations led to the mistaken judicial findings of paternity, the Williams holding seems to protect the women from liability. If they seek contribution from the actual fathers, it is unclear how the actual fathers might be held liable to reimburse putative fathers for support payments ordered by trial courts upon explicit paternity findings. This may not concern some observers, but it should. After all, the whole purpose of our legal system is to fashion orderly and just outcomes to disputes. Like Judge VanAusdall, I am obliged to apply the law set forth by our supreme court in Williams. But I agree that it is unsound policy to force unsuspecting men to pay child support for children they never fathered simply because the men and judges have been deceived into believing allegations by mothers about paternity. If we have enough sense to recognize the effects of paternity testing when we get them, we should have enough sense to vacate inaccurate legal pronouncements of paternity in divorce decrees and child- support orders whether they occur in contested matters or not. After all, a judicial process based on lies will be legal as long as it can compel obedience. Any process that defies the truth it discovers in favor of a lie it formerly believed is ultimately unjust and undeserving of respect, no matter how much we rationalize it and despite our success in compelling deceived men to obey it.