Court Opinion

ID: 9625305
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 07:35:51.352692+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:06:05.893206
License: Public Domain

Stolz, Judge,
concurring specially.
There can be little or no doubt as to the correctness of the majority opinion under the precedents long ago established by our Supreme Court. This court is bound by those decisions and is without power to effect meaningful change. At the risk of being labeled a judicial heretic, I most respectfully submit that the time has come when the Supreme Court should again review the year’s support statutes and case law with a view toward injecting a measure of fairness into the procedure. At present, the widow can usually pre-empt an estate to the utter exclusion of other lawful heirs (her sui juris children or those by a prior marriage) and creditors of the estate. The statute provides for the setting apart of "a sufficiency from the estate for ... support and maintenance for the space of 12 months. . .” Code § 113-1002. Additional petitions for year’s support may be filed if the estate is kept together for more than one year. Code § 113-1004. Thus, there is ample opportunity for the widow to have access to a substantial portion of very large estates without others who have rights and interests being unfairly excluded.
The lack of fairness in the law as it is being applied, is made apparent in the citations contained in the majority opinion. In a series of decisions, our highest court has held (1) that if the appraisers have acted upon insufficient or misleading information, the injured party can caveat the return and raise all relevant facts (Moore v. Moore, 126 Ga. 735, 739, supra); (2) that, however, since the trial in superior court is de novo, no inquiry is permitted as to whether the appraisers acted singly or as a group, nor as to the evidence which they considered1 in making their *553return (Knowles v. Knowles, 125 Ga. App. 642, supra); (3) that the appraisers cannot testify as to the basis of the return; and (4) that the appraisers’ return is prima facie correct (Brumbelow v. Brumbelow, 111 Ga. App. 665, supra).
It seems incredible that such an essentially unfair procedure could exist in a system of justice based on fair play. The issue is not one of impeaching the appraisers’ return, but one of determining the amount of money or property or both to which a widow and/or minor children are entitled for support for one year. It seems most one-sided and arbitrary that an appraisers’ return should be given judicial certification as "prima facie correct” when the appraisers might never have met, made any investigation, heard or examined any evidence, or done anything more than estimate the maximum value of the estate and make such their award. Either the rule prohibiting attack on the appraisers’ return or that making the return prima facie correct or both, should be changed. The members of this court are powerless to do so. I can but hope that those of our highest court will correct the imbalance created in some of their predecessors’ decisions. I concur in the judgment of affirmance.

 This presumably precludes any testimony that the appraisers heard no evidence before making their return.