Court Opinion

ID: 9587565
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 23:23:48.082234+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:00:33.595543
License: Public Domain

EAGLES, Chief Judge,
dissenting.
I respectfully dissent.
The majority’s logic would be flawless if the intestate had died while a minor. Had intestate died as a minor, her father’s abandonment of her would have properly deprived him of the right to inherit from her by intestacy. G.S. 31A-2. Here, however, the intestate was no longer a minor. Since intestate died as an adult, her father has a statutory right to inherit without regard to his prior sins of omission. G.S. 29-15(3). As an adult, intestate could have prepared a will and could have specified how her estate would be distributed. G.S. 31-1. Whether through negligence or by intention, intestate (like most people her age) never executed a will to assure that the principles of North Carolina intestate law would not control disbursement of her estate. Here, I believe the intestate succession act mandates that the father share in intestate’s estate.
G.S. 31A-2 bars abandoning parents’ right to administer a deceased child’s estate and to share in the estate by intestate succession. In the statute’s exceptions it refers to a parent resuming “its care and maintenance,” G.S. 31A-2(1), and a parent having “been deprived of the custody of his or her child” and having “substantially complied with all orders . . . requiring contribution to the support of the child.” G.S. 31A-2(2). Generally, only where a minor child is involved does a parent have responsibility for “care and maintenance” and only where a minor child is involved does a parent have custody rights or obligations to support a child. Nothing in this record indicates that the father here any longer had responsibilities for care and maintenance, or custody and support. It is clear from the plain language of the statute when read in context that “child” for the purposes of G.S. 31A-2 is limited to minor children.
*656On the facts of this case, this result might not seem “fair.” We have all learned, however, that “hard cases make bad law.” This is the most recent example. To rale as the majority has decided will foster estates disputes and potential litigation in every case where parents and deceased adult children are estranged at the time of death or were estranged at any time in the child’s minority. I think certainty in the law requires us to conclude that G.S. 31A-2 applies only to minor children-decedents.