Court Opinion

ID: 9712411
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 04:53:18.454762+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:23:11.978601
License: Public Domain

Concurring Opinion by
Mr. Justice Pomeroy:
The first question for decision here, as both the majority and dissenting opinions agree, is the jurisdiction of the Orphans’ Court of Allegheny County to appoint a guardian for minor children who have never been personally present in Pennsylvania and who for seven years have lived with their maternal grandmother in Austria. How this situation developed, and the circumstances of the family, are described in the opinions. *338Only if jurisdiction is found is it in order to consider the propriety of its exercise.
The starting point in the jurisdictional determination must be the applicable statute, which is the Fiduciaries Act of 1949, §1011 (a), Act of April 18, 1949, P. L. 512, Art. X, §1011 (a), 20 P.S. §320.1011 (a). It reads as follows: “(a) Resident minor. A guardian of the person or of the estate of a minor may be appointed by the court of the county in which the minor resides.” (Emphasis added.)1
This section is derived from §59 (a) of the Fiduciaries Act of 1917, Act of June 7, 1917, P. L. 447, §59(a), 20 P.S. Ch. 3, App. §1021. This section provided that the orphans’ court of each county “shall have the care of the persons of minors resident within said county . . . and shall have power ... to appoint guardians for such as are under the age of fourteen . . . Such appointment ... by the orphans’ court of the county in which the minor resides, shall have the like effect in every other county in this Commonwealth . . .” (Emphasis added.)
This provision, in turn, was Section 5 of the Act of March 29, 1832, P. L. 190, with certain alterations not here material. That act was based on the Act of March 27, 1713, 1 Sm. L. 81.
It is immediately apparent that the words “resides” and “resident” as used in the Fiduciaries Act of 1949 need definition: do they refer to those minors who are physically present in the county, in the sense of living there either permanently or temporarily, or do they refer to minors who are domiciled in the county irrespective of physical presence, or some combination of the two?
*339It seems strange that with a statutory genealogy of such ancient age, the words in question have never, so far as our research discloses, received interpretation by this Court. We have recognized, however, more than once that “reside” or “resident” may have various meanings, dependent on context and purpose of the legislation. See Raymond v. Leishman, 243 Pa. 64, 89 Atl. 791 (1914); Restatement, Conflict of Laws, §30, Comment e (1934).2 Further, we have stated that domicile and residence are not convertible terms. DuPuy Estate, 373 Pa. 423, 427, 96 A. 2d 318 (1953).
Neither the majority opinion nor the dissenting opinion adverts to the problem of statutory interpretation here involved; each of them assumes that the test of jurisdiction is the domicile of the minor, and proceeds to decide, as a question of common law conflict of laws, whether domicile existed, with opposite answers resulting.
“Resident minor”, as used in §1011 (a) of the Fiduciaries Act of 1949, may well refer to a domiciled minor, and “resides” may mean “is domiciled”, but this should not be decided sub silentio or by implication, and I, for one, am not sure it is the correct interpretation. If it is not correct, and “resides” in the sense of some physical presence in, or connection with the county is what is meant, then clearly no jurisdiction existed in this case. If, on the other hand, domicile is indeed the true test under our Act, I am obliged to find it also lacking under the unique facts of this case. I do so, however, on a rationale somewhat different from that of the majority. Suffice it to say that the situation of the minor children in the case at bar is sufficiently similar to that where both parents are dead or *340have abandoned their child that the proposed salutary rule of Comment i to §22 of the Proposed Official Draft, Restatement (Second) Conflict of Laws, cited approvingly by the majority, should be applicable. This would place the domicile of the children at the home of their grandmother, who has stood in loco parentis to them for most of their lives, and which is manifestly the place to which they are most closely related. Accordingly, I concur in the result here reached.
Mr. Justice Jones joins in this opinion.

 Subsection (b) is headed “Nonresident minor.” and provides for the appointment of guardian of the estate, but not the person, of such a minor.

 Substantially tbe same observation appears in tbe Proposed Official Draft of the Restatement (Second) Conflict of Laws, §11, comment k (1967),