Bahl v. Lambert Farms, Inc.

• Decision Date: 24 March 2003
• Citation: 572 Pa. 675,819 A.2d 534
• Parties: John BAHL, Timothy Bahl, William Bahl, Jeanne M. Jennings, Catherine Horton and Theresa Bacon, Appellees v. LAMBERT FARMS, INC., Appellant.
• Court: Pennsylvania Supreme Court

819 A.2d 534

572 Pa. 675

John BAHL, Timothy Bahl, William Bahl, Jeanne M. Jennings, Catherine Horton and Theresa Bacon, Appellees v. LAMBERT FARMS, INC., Appellant.

Supreme Court of Pennsylvania.

Argued May 14, 2002.

Decided March 24, 2003.

Daniel John Barrett, Athens, for Appellant, Lambert Farms, Inc.

Jeffrey Phillip Osmond, Towanda, John Kocsis, Athens, for Appellees, John Bahl et al.

Before ZAPPALA, and CAPPY, CASTILLE, NIGRO, NEWMAN, SAYLOR and EAKIN, JJ.

OPINION

Justice NIGRO.

This Court granted allowance of appeal to consider whether the Superior Court erred in concluding that under the circumstances of this intestate succession case, maternity by estoppel can be asserted against a third party. For the following reasons, we reverse.

The family saga giving rise to this dispute began with William Bahl ("William Sr.") and his wife, Rose, who together owned a family farm in Forks Township, Sullivan County. William Sr. and Rose had six natural children—Zita, Genevieve, Geraldine, Francis, Joseph and Margaret. According to Genevieve, in 1921, when she was 17 years old, her 21-year-old sister Zita brought home an out-of-wedlock son. To avoid the stigma that they feared would attach to a child born out of wedlock, Zita's parents raised the infant as their own, calling him William J. Bahl ("William Jr."). William Sr. and Rose never formally adopted William Jr., but his baptismal and school records indicated that he was their child and obituaries that were published when various members of the family died listed him as a sibling of Zita, Genevieve, Geraldine, Francis, Joseph and Margaret. In addition, Rose wrote letters to William Jr., which she signed either "mom" or "mother," and likewise, Rose's natural children wrote letters to William Jr. in which they simply referred to Rose as "mom." When William Sr. passed away in 1945, title to the family farm vested in Rose as his surviving wife. In 1969, Rose died and the farm's title passed to her surviving children and grandchildren by intestate succession. Almost two decades later, in 1991, Appellant Lambert Farms, Inc. purchased the farm. As three of Rose's six natural children (Francis, Joseph and Margaret) had passed away by that time, the deed listed the grantors of title as her three surviving natural children (Zita, Genevieve, and Geraldine), Geraldine's husband, Joseph's son (Joseph, Jr.), Margaret's two daughters (Rosemary and Patricia) and their husbands.¹ Neither William Jr., who had passed away in 1980, nor any of his heirs were listed on the deed as grantors of title.

On January 5, 1998, Appellees John Bahl, Timothy Bahl, William Bahl, Jeanne M. Jennings, Catherine Horton, and Theresa Bacon, who are William Jr.'s heirs, brought the instant action to partition the farm, alleging that one-sixth of the farm was rightfully theirs. Essentially, the heirs contended that William Jr. was the last-born son of William Sr. and Rose and thus, he had inherited one-sixth of the farm by intestate succession. As the heirs had subsequently inherited their father's property, which they maintain included his one-sixth share of the farm, and had not granted title to their share of the farm to Lambert Farms in the 1991 deed, they contended that Lambert Farms had not purchased their one-sixth share and that their one-sixth portion of the land should now be partitioned for their benefit.

The parties submitted the matter to the court for a non-jury trial on stipulated facts, with the facts consisting of various documents and the videotaped deposition testimony of William Sr.'s and Rose's daughter, Genevieve, who was ninety-three years old at the time. On February 21, 2000, the trial court entered judgment in favor of Lambert Farms and against William Jr.'s heirs. The heirs filed post-trial motions, which the trial court denied in an April 26, 2000 order and opinion. The trial court found, based on the evidence submitted, that the heirs had failed to sustain their burden of proving that William Jr. was the natural child of William Sr. and Rose. Instead, the court credited the testimony of Genevieve that William Jr. was the out-of-wedlock child of Zita and that William Sr. and Rose had merely raised William Jr. as their son to avoid the condemnation of the community, which the court noted "would have inevitably occurred in the 1920's." Trial Ct. Op. at 2. Although the court recognized that William Sr. and Rose had held William Jr. out to the public as their son and that Zita had listed William Jr.'s heirs as her nieces and nephews in her will, it concluded that "[t]o be one's child for the purpose of inheritance, the putative parent must have contributed one-half of the genetic material comprising the subject's 23 pairs of chromosomes, or the putative parent must have adopted the subject in some recognized legal proceeding." Trial Ct. Op. at 2. As there was no evidence in the record that William Sr. and Rose had ever formally adopted William Jr., the court refused to recognize the claim of William Jr.'s heirs to Rose's former property and therefore entered a verdict in favor of Lambert Farms.

William Jr.'s heirs appealed to the Superior Court, which reversed. Bahl v. Lambert Farms, Inc., 773 A.2d 1256 (Pa.Super.2001). Like the trial court, the Superior Court held that to establish maternity, William Jr.'s heirs were required to prove by clear and convincing evidence that Rose, not Zita, was William Jr.'s natural mother. Id. at 1259 (citing In re Estate of Greenwood, 402 Pa.Super. 536, 587 A.2d 749, 754 (1991); Estate of Hoffman, 320 Pa.Super. 113, 466 A.2d 1087, 1089 (1983)). Moreover, upon consideration of the evidence, the Superior Court concluded that the trial court had not abused its discretion in finding that the heirs had failed to meet this burden. 773 A.2d at 1260.

The court then went on to consider whether Lambert Farms should be equitably estopped from denying that Rose was William Jr.'s mother in light of the conduct of William Sr. and Rose throughout their lives. Citing support cases in which this Court has recognized the doctrine of paternity by estoppel to prevent acting parents from denying the paternity of minor children, id. at 1260-61 (citing Brinkley v. King, 549 Pa. 241, 701 A.2d 176 (1997); Freedman v. McCandless, 539 Pa. 584, 654 A.2d 529 (1995); Fish v. Behers, 559 Pa. 523, 741 A.2d 721 (1999)), and pointing out that another panel of the Superior Court had applied the doctrine in an intestate case involving adults, see In re Estate of Simmons-Carton, 434 Pa.Super. 641, 644 A.2d 791 (1994), the Superior Court considered whether the doctrine should be applied to estop Lambert Farms here. Noting that the documentary evidence and Genevieve's testimony supported the proposition that William Sr. and Rose encouraged the world to view William Jr. as their son, the Superior Court accepted the heirs' argument that William Jr. "was, for all intents and purposes, including intestate succession, their son." 773 A.2d at 1260. The court further stated that "to allow [Lambert Farms], nearly thirty years after Rose's death, to attempt to disprove [William Sr.] and Rose Bahl's clear intent to raise and treat [William Jr.] as their son, would be a rejection of the public policy our Courts have affirmed many times: that a child has the right to expect the law to protect his rights and those of his heirs with regard to those whom the world knows as his parents." Id. at 1262. Accordingly, the court held that William Jr.'s heirs "must have the right to claim their father's fair intestate share" as a child of William Sr. and Rose, and then remanded the case for additional proceedings consistent with its opinion. Id. at 1263.

In a concurring opinion, Judge Olszewski took issue with the majority for creating, in essence, "`common law adoption' for inheritance purposes." Id. at 1264. He further stated that such an approach was "in direct conflict" with In re Estate of Hoffman, 320 Pa.Super. 113, 466 A.2d 1087 (1983), in which the Superior Court held that a foster child raised by relatives is not "issue" as that term is defined by Pennsylvania's laws of intestate succession, even if the child is held out to the community as the relatives' own. 773 A.2d at 1264. Judge Olszewski nevertheless concurred in the majority's holding, based largely on the fact that estate documentation recorded in the Orphan's Court listed William Jr. as the son of Rose and proposed that one sixth of the estate be distributed to him. Stating that Rose's natural children did not challenge William Jr.'s entitlement to an inheritance as set forth in those documents within five years of the distribution of Rose's estate, see 20 Pa.C.S. § 3521, and that Lambert Farms had constructive notice, via those documents, of the claim of William Jr.'s heirs to their intestate share of the farm, Judge Olszewski opined that the trial court should not have permitted Lambert Farms to challenge William Jr.'s status or that of his issue.

On appeal to this Court, Lambert Farms contends that the Superior Court erred in applying a parentage by estoppel analysis here, and thus erred in reversing the trial court's denial of the petition to partition. For the following reasons, we agree and hold that the heirs of William Jr. did not inherit any portion of the farm by intestate succession and are not now entitled to claim a portion of the farm under an estoppel theory.

Under the version of the Intestate Act of 1947 that was in effect at the time of Rose's death in 1969,² when a mother passed away, leaving no surviving spouse, her property passed to her "issue." 20 P.S. § 1.3 (1950); see also 20 Pa.C.S. 2103(1) (2002).³ Although the statute did not specifically define "issue," it made clear in setting forth the rules of succession that only those with some "degree of consanguinity" to the decedent ordinarily qualified as such.⁴ Specifically, the statute provided that in passing to a decedent's issue, the estate ...