Court Opinion

ID: 9589160
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 23:41:50.856564+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:30:38.277423
License: Public Domain

POFF, J.,
dissenting.
I cannot join the majority in this opinion. Ancient notions of primogeniture and estates tail and the Statute de Donis have long since been abandoned in this Commonwealth. See Orndoff v. Turman, 29 Va. (2 Leigh) 200 (1830). Left surviving, however, was the case-law rule that a testator is presumed to have employed such words as “issue” to exclude “persons who qualify as such only by or through adoption”. Langhorne v. Langhorne, 212 Va. 577, 578, 186 S.E.2d 50, 51 (1972). That presumption was rooted in medieval England’s obsession with bloodlines in the devolution of property. See generally T. Bergin & P. Haskell, Preface to Estates in Land and Future Interests 9 (1966). As I read Acts 1978, c. 647, the General Assembly intended to reverse the presumption enunciated in Langhorne.
The 1978 Act, a comprehensive revision of statutory and case law, was patterned after statutory drafts recommended in a law review article authored by Professor J. Rodney Johnson, Inheritance Rights of Children in Virginia, 12 U. Rich. L. Rev. 275 (1978). The legislature repealed four sections in Title 64.1, entitled “Wills and Decedents’ Estates”, amended and reenacted four sections in that Title, added five new sections to that Title, and made certain conforming changes in related titles.
Code § 64.1-5.1, one of the new sections, provides that when a parent-child relationship “must be established to determine succession by, through or from a person . . . [a]n adopted person is the child of an adopting parent”. To conform existing sections with the new definition, the General Assembly deleted as superfluous references in Code §§ 64.1-11 and -16 to adopted children and, in § 64.1-64, substituted the word “children” for the word “issue” so that all children, including a “child of an adopting parent”, would enjoy the benefits of the lapsed legacy statute.
*148Code § 64.1-71.1, another new section, is addressed to courts construing generic terms in wills and trusts. Under that section, “adopted persons ... are included in class gift terminology and terms of relationship”. This canon of construction applies “to all wills of decedents dying after July one, nineteen hundred seventy-eight,1 regardless of when executed.”2 Id.
This new canon must be applied in the interpretation of a will “unless a contrary intent shall appear on the face of the will”. Id. The majority holds that the word “issue” must be given its common-law meaning and that the testatrix’s use of that word evinces an intent to restrict her class gift to her biological grandchildren or their biological descendants. But a gift to “issue” is archetypically “class gift terminology”, and courts of this Commonwealth, including the Supreme Court, are commanded by statute to interpret such language to connote testamentary intent to include adopted persons in the class eligible for the gift. Yet the majority construes this very language as proof of intent to exclude them.3 Other courts, applying statutes similar to those enacted by our General Assembly in 1978, have felt bound by the statutory mandate. See Wheeling Dollar Sav. & Trust Co. v. Hanes, 160 W.Va. 711, 719, 237 S.E.2d 499, 504 (1977); accord Wielert v. Larson, 84 Ill. App. 3d 151, 154, 404 N.E.2d 1111, 1113 (1980). See also Scribner v. Berry, 489 A.2d 8 (Me. 1985); Lewis v. Green, *149389 So. 2d 235 (Fla. App. 1980); In re Trusts Created by Agreement with Harrington, 311 Minn. 403, 250 N.W.2d 163 (1977).
In effect, the majority has disinterred and applied a case-law rule of construction buried by the General Assembly. As I perceive the public-policy standards imposed by the 1978 Act, adopted persons now stand on the same footing as biological children for purposes of both testate and intestate inheritance, provided, of course, that a testator may expressly confine the beneficiaries of a class gift to those related by blood or expressly exclude those who are not.
Applying the statutory canons of construction in effect in Virginia on the date of the testatrix’s death, see Code § 64.1-62, I would hold that Mrs. Glover is included in the class gift terminology employed in the Hannan will and, as the sole surviving child of her adopting parent, is entitled to take, through him, his share of the testamentary gift. Accordingly, because I find no merit in the appellants’ other assignments of error, I would affirm the judgment.
CARRICO, C.J., and COCHRAN, J., join in dissent.

 Because the testator in Vicars v. Mullins, 227 Va. 432, 318 S.E.2d 377 (1984), a case cited by the majority, had died in 1904, Code § 64.1-71.1 was not applicable to the question on appeal, and we applied the common-law presumption enunciated in Langhorne. In a recent note commenting upon the decision in Vicars and the effect of the enactment of Code § 64.1-71.1 which he had drafted, Professor Johnson said: “Although this case is valuable as a good explanation of prior law, it will have no application to wills of decedents dying after July 1, 1978 (regardless of when executed), which will be governed by a statute passed in 1978 for the express purpose of reversing these common law presumptions.” Johnson, Wills, Trusts, and Estates, 19 U. Rich. L. Rev. 779, 792 (1985).

 Code §§ 64.1-5.1 and -71.1 are declarations of public policy. In the formulation of public policy, the legislature has the power to amend laws affecting testamentary dispositions retroactively, and a testator is charged with knowledge of that fact when he executes his will. Indeed, a testamentary gift, valid when the will was executed, may be completely revoked retroactively by operation of “a statutory declaration of public policy concerning wills” enacted before the testator’s death. Papen v. Papen, 216 Va. 879, 883, 224 S.E.2d 153, 155 (1976) (revocation by divorce from spouse-beneficiary).

 It should be added that the majority reaches this conclusion in the face of facts which tend to defeat it. Janet Hannan executed her will after the adoption decree was entered, and in a letter addressed to Mrs. Glover following James Hannan’s death, the testatrix referred to her late son as “your Dad” and said, “[W]e are all so happy — Liz to have you in the family”.