Court Opinion

ID: 9626404
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 08:10:51.477145+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:06:26.831200
License: Public Domain

WOLFE, Chief Justice
(concurring).
I concur in the finding that the district court, having jurisdiction of the action for extrinsic fraud, properly dismissed that action. I agree with the observation of Mr. Justice HENRIOD
“that probate well might have been deferred a little longer in this case in the hope that what happened would happen — the appearance of the children * *
In a case where it is known that there was a child or children, a sum equal to their share should have been placed in savings or in trust with a reliable institution in order to permit continued search at reasonable expense of their whereabouts, to be charged against the fund. This is the English practice. These children not having been heard from by those who might be expected to hear from them (which would encompass the father) were subject to the rebuttable presumption of death. But their children, if any survived, might have been living and the presumption that they were dead not indulgeable. While I cannot impute to Norton or the supposed widow dishonest or ulterior motives because of the presumption of good faith which attends them, I incline to the belief that the diligence used in this case was not reasonably adequate or appropriate to the occasion or to its importance as advocated in the concurring opinion filed in the case of Parker v. Ross, 117 Utah 417, 217 P. 2d 373.
I think it unfortunate that these children suffered the loss of their patrimony to the heirs of a woman in respect *49to whom there was doubt as to her marital and widow status —and this in spite of what seems a tenuous filial devotion reciprocated by the father. Even under those circumstances the imagination of the probate court should have been sufficiently awakened to cause him to sense the disappointment which these children would justly feel upon learning of the consequences of his too hasty action. Simple and available administration procedure pending continued search would have saved them the loss of their property which furnished a windfall to strangers. Damnum absque injuria arises here because of the hasty action of the probate court.