Court Opinion

ID: 9776227
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 19:28:05.425825+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:32:36.121335
License: Public Domain

P.A.Hollingsworth, Justice, dissenting. The Court correctly states that § 60-501 requires a surviving spouse to be married for more than one year before the spouse can take against the will. The Court then recognizes the fact that no similar requirement is placed on the surviving spouse if the decedent dies intestate. There is a recognition of the different treatment the statute gives to those people who have been married less than one year from those who havé been married more than one year. It is clear that under § 60-407 the former wife, Wanda Epperson, takes nothing under the will. The remaining issue is whether the children take everything or whether the present wife, Carolyn Epperson, has a right to elect to take against the will since she had not been married to the decedent one year. The Court holds today that § 60-501 is a valid governmental interest discouraging death bed marriages. However, in Eisenstadt v. Baird, 405 U.S. 458 (1972), the United States Supreme Court stated: The Equal Protection Clause of [the fourteenth amendment] does, however, deny to States the power to legislate that different treatment be accorded to persons placed by a state into different classes on the basis of criteria wholly unrelated to the objective of that statute. A classification “must be reasonable, not arbitrary, and must rest upon some ground of difference having a fair and substantial relation to the object of the legislation, so that all persons similarly circumstanced shall be treated alike.” Citations omitted. One statute, § 60-501, precludes a surviving spouse from participating in the deceased spouse’s estate because of a marriage lasting less than one year. Another section of statutes, § 61-201 et seq., allows a surviving spouse to be endowed in fee simple to various percentages to the decedent spouse’s estate regardless of the length of marriage. Clearly, the statutory classification bears only the most tenuous relation to the legislative purpose. Such a combination of results can only be characterized as arbitrary. Therefore, the Equal Protection Clause forbids us to give it any effect. I would affirm. Purtle, J., joins in this dissent.