Court Opinion

ID: 9790896
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-31 02:01:02.870429+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:37:32.483884
License: Public Domain

URBIGKIT, Justice,
specially concurring.
It is apparent from the text of the majority that this court now adopts from our earlier case of Kamp v. Kamp, 640 P.2d 48 (Wyo.1982) the special concurrence written by Justice Rooney and eschews the majority decision authored by Chief Justice Rose. I specially concur in present decision to deny the father’s support obligation for his nineteen-year-old son by conclusion that on this subject judicial legislating should come to a present end. The legislature should urgently undertake to establish within this complex subject of parental responsibility for their children what that obligation should be for support and maintenance, if any, after their children have achieved the age of majority set by present law at nineteen.
Candidly, I find an equal if not greater obligation and opportunity for consecration of parental responsibility in this case to benefit the nineteen-year-old son as compared with the devotion and abiding affection related by the mother, Marguerite, for her daughter, Mariana, in Kamp.
I cannot accept the rather blase denial of parental obligation and opportunity for Christopher Jennings. This young man was clearly at the cross-roads of life and the trial court in criminal sentencing had already recognized in parole order how important completion of a high school education and his maintenance at the home of his parents might be for his future. At no time of parenting was the immediacy, difficulty and intensive challenge to be greater than at that time for Robert and Loy Jennings to their son Christopher.1 For Christopher, the year of continued education required by his parole order commenced in *181August 1988 before he had achieved adulthood and would have ended in May or June of 1989. What now may be the status about which this litigation is continued is certainly not to be revealed in present appellate file.
What I see from Kamp — Jennings is total confusion that urgently seeks thoughtful legislative attention within its constitutional responsibility for the public well-being. The rules of responsibility of parents for their children should be set as a matter of statute and not ad hoc judicial reaction to individual cases. Now clouded and questioned are the general subjects of responsibility for post-majority advanced education, effectiveness of divorce separation agreements or decrees considering post-majority obligation to the litigants’ children and the obligation, if any, of the parents following incapacitation of their children post-adulthood.
The text of academic reviews and annotation analyses broadly consider the scope of society’s concern and the opportunity for legislative decision. It was said in 1987 that Wyoming was only one of four states lacking statutes relating to disabled adult children. Horan, Postminority Support for College Education — A Legally Enforceable Obligation in Divorce Proceedings?, 20 Fam.L.Q. 589, 589 n. 1 (1987). Comprehensive consideration can be additionally found in Washburn, Post-Majority Support: Oh Dad, Poor Dad, 44 Temp. L.Q. 319 (1971); Note, Express Provision for Post-Majority Child Support in Dissolution Decree Is Valid By Operation of the Marriage Dissolution Act of 1973. In re Marriage of Melville, 11 Wash.App. 879, 526 P.2d 1228 (1974), 10 Gonz.L.Rev. 933 (1975); and H. Clark, Law of Domestic Relations ch. 15 at 495 (1968). See also Annotation, Parent’s Obligation to Support Adult Child, 1 A.L.R.2d 910 (1948 & 1985 Supp.); Annotation, Responsibility of Noncustodial Divorced Parent to Pay For, Or Contribute To, Costs of Child’s College Education, 99 A.L.R.3d 322 (1980); and Annotation, Post-Majority Disability as Reviving Parental Duty to Support Child, 48 A.L.R.4th 919 (1986).
The special concurrence in Kamp, 640 P.2d at 52 quoted from the Iowa case of Davis v. Davis, 246 Iowa 262, 67 N.W.2d 566, 568 (1954):
“It is true, as respondent suggests, that generally at common law a parent’s obligation to support his child ends when the latter becomes of age. But there is an important, widely recognized exception to this rule where the child because of weak body or mind is unable to care for itself upon attaining majority. The obligation to support such a child ceases only when the necessity for the support ceases. Courts throughout the land have so held emphatically and eloquently.”
Rationally, in this world of 1989, it is absurd and perhaps almost criminal to believe that a nineteen-year-old without advanced education is realistically able “to care for [himjself upon obtaining majority” within this computer world or that the “necessity for the support ceases” for further education which is pursued by the young individual.
In this era of divorce, Kamp — Jennings will have a broad social affect and it is my conviction that Wyo. Const, art. 2, § 1 constitutes for the legislature a call to establish by an enacted statute where the limitations of enforceable responsibility of parents to their children should end. I would hope that the legislature would be constitutionally summoned to that task in order that this court does not continue to be responsible to substitute an ad hoc case-to-case adjudication.2
I specially concur on the basis that the legislature has provided, for me, no direction for enforceable parental obligation *182for support or maintenance of their children after the age of majority has been achieved, except within the small enclave this court has previously carved out in Kamp. The balancing of rights and responsibilities within the fundamental relationship of parent and child calls first for the legislature to regulate and define and then only for the judiciary to apply, differentiate with set standards and finally to enforce. See a discussion of these problems with the answers provided in Griffin v. Griffin, 384 Pa.Super. 188, 558 A.2d 75 (1989) and the cited scholastic reviews which provide both interesting thought and exciting challenge.3

. The record does not inform whether Christopher was sentenced under the deferred conviction process of W.S. 7-13-301 in order that good behavior and probation term compliance would save him being tagged a FELON — A CONVICT — & person who had lost many civil liberties including the right to vote, serve on a jury or own a firearm. Mariana Kamp could only be loved, maintained and protected. Christopher might be saved. When half of the American adult population becomes felons and convicts and that fact comes to be recognized by the remaining voters, perhaps the untainted legislators, the judiciary and even the decisional public will understand the permanent and pervasive scars of felony conviction and destroyed capacity and lost opportunity for societal contribution. See W.S. 6-10-106(a), which states that "[a] person convicted of a felony is incompetent to be an elector or juror or to hold any office of honor, trust or profit within this state, * * *.” See also 18 U.S.C.A. app. §§ 1201 and 1202 (West 1985), federal Firearms Act.

. The authorities also agree that the Viet Nam war motivated reduction in the age of majority to nineteen or, in some states, eighteen, and had, conversely, great detriment in problems relating to the young people of our society. We reduce the age of majority, but at the same time by economic and societal developments, delay the earliest age at which most young people can realistically expect to be economically emancipated. At least by the prior majority age of twenty-one, aspiring students were well underway in pursuing college education or technical training.

. Griffin casually notes another problem which deserves realistic attention by the legislature. What participation should the young, near-adult or adult child have in the litigative proceeding for their support and to whom should the payments be made? It may well be that surrogate litigating by the parents in the name of or for the benefit of the older child might providently be benefitted by direct litigation or at least participation by the person whose interests are most immediately involved.