Court Opinion

ID: 9793760
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-31 02:52:41.450672+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T08:06:48.570514
License: Public Domain

CROCKETT, Justice:
(concurring with the decision, but with separate comments.)
It is my conviction from which I am unwilling to depart, that the setting of the age of attaining majority is a legislative function. Furthermore, that so long as the legislature has determined that there is a reasonable basis for differentiation of classes, and all persons within the same class are treated equal, there is no impermissible discrimination. It is not my understanding that our “age of majority statute” has been declared invalid, but rather that the Stanton I decision said that our statute should be applied without discrimination on the basis of sex.
This court remanded this case to our district court under that mandate. That court ruled that in applying the statute equally to both sexes the age of majority should be 21. My agreement with the instant opinion that that ruling was not properly applied in this case is based on two propositions: First, the reasons stated therein. Second and more important in my mind is something which seems to have been forgotten or overlooked.
This is a ease in equity, a controversy between two individuals, not as to current and ongoing support money for a minor child, but for an alleged accumulation of past due support money of $100 per month for three years, totalling $3,600, claimed to have accrued under a divorce decree which made no such order; and which could not by any logic or reason in law or equity be construed to have so provided.
I reiterate with the firmest possible conviction that in my judgment it would be wholly discordant to principles of equity and justice to impose such an unexpected and unplanned for burden upon the defendant by an ex post facto change of the rules after the entry of the decree. To avoid repetition here, in support of what I have said herein I refer to the main and concurring opinions in our prior decision in this case, Utah, 1976, 552 P.2d 112, and authorities therein cited.