Haas v. Chater
| Decision Date | 15 May 1996 |
| Docket Number | No. 95-1918,95-1918 |
| Parties | , 50 Soc.Sec.Rep.Ser. 396, Unempl.Ins.Rep. (CCH) P 15162B Christi HAAS, as parent and natural guardian of Scott M. Glenn, II, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. Shirley S. CHATER, Commissioner of Social Security, Defendant-Appellee. |
| Court | U.S. Court of Appeals — Seventh Circuit |
Appeal from the United States District Court for the Northern District of Indiana, Fort Wayne Division, No. 94 C 238; Roger B. Cosbey, Magistrate Judge.
Ivan A. Lebamoff, Thomas P. Boyer, Ann M. Trzynka (argued), Fort Wayne, IN, for Plaintiff-Appellant.
Robert N. Trgovich, Office of the United States Attorney, Fort Wayne, IN, Michael C. Messer (argued), Department of Health and Human Services, Region V, Office of the General Counsel, Chicago, IL, for Defendant-Appellee.
Before POSNER, Chief Judge, and BAUER and DIANE P. WOOD, Circuit Judges.
A dependent child of a wage earner is entitled to "child's insurance benefits" under the Social Security Act if the wage earner is insured under the Act and dies, becomes disabled, or reaches the age of 65. 42 U.S.C. § 402(d). Problems of determining entitlement sometimes arise when the wage earner dies and was not married to the child's mother. The Act contains an exhaustive list of methods of establishing entitlement to child insurance benefits in such a case: proof that the wage earner would have been married to the child's mother but for a technical deficiency in the marriage; a written acknowledgment of paternity by the wage earner; a judicial decree that the wage earner was the child's father, provided the decree was issued before the wage earner died; a court order that the wage earner contribute to the support of the child because the wage earner was the child's parent; a determination by the Social Security Administration that the wage earner was the parent of the child and was living with or contributing to the support of the child when the wage earner died; or proof that the child was entitled to inherit from the wage earner under the law of intestate succession of the wage earner's state of domicile. 42 U.S.C. §§ 416(h)(1)(B), (2), (3). Only the last-mentioned of these methods (§ 416(h)(2)(A)) was available to Scott M. Glenn, II, the applicant in our case, born November 6, 1992, eight months after the death in an automobile accident of Scott M. Glenn, the wage earner. The child's mother, Christi Haas, had not been married to the wage earner or living with him; no paternity decree or support order had been issued; and he had provided no support directly or indirectly to the unborn child.
One month after Scott's birth, his mother filed a petition in an Indiana state court to establish the wage earner's paternity. The wage earner's mother, who was the personal representative of his estate, testified in support of paternity, and the court entered a declaration that the wage earner was indeed the child's father. The estate later filed a suit for wrongful death based on the accident in which the wage earner had been killed. The court in which that suit was filed determined that the child, as the only dependent next of kin of a decedent who had left no widow, was entitled to the proceeds of the suit (which was eventually settled). Ind.Code § 34-1-1-2.
The administrative law judge acknowledged that there was satisfactory evidence of the wage earner's paternity but nevertheless denied the application for benefits. Young Glenn's eligibility for benefits depended on his eligibility to inherit under Indiana's intestate succession law, and Ind.Code § 29-1-2-7(b) provides that, "for inheritance," a child born out of wedlock will be treated as if his parents were married only if
(1) The paternity of the child has been established by law in a cause of action that is filed:
(A) During the father's lifetime; or
(B) Within five (5) months after the father's death; or
(2) The putative father marries the mother of the child and acknowledges the child to be his own. [Emphasis added]
The suit to establish the wage earner's paternity "for inheritance" had been brought one month after the child's birth and therefore nine months after the wage earner's death: too late.
The appellant argues that the five-month statutory deadline is merely a statute of limitations and hence is waived by not being pleaded. It was not pleaded in the paternity suit. In fact that suit was uncontested. The most common type of paternity suit is one brought against a man who denies paternity, or at least doesn't want the financial burdens of fatherhood. Here the man was dead, and apparently left no assets other than a claim for wrongful death. Since the personal representative of his estate believed herself to be the child's grandmother, and since unless she herself had been dependent on the decedent, of which there is no hint in the record, she would have had no personal stake in the wrongful-death action, she had no financial incentive to resist the paternity suit and she did not resist it. She had nothing to lose and money for the child whom she believed to be her grandson to gain.
Although the facts are unusual and doubts about the wage earner's paternity slight, the danger of collusive paternity suits is not slight. Whenever the putative father dies, a child or children can sue to establish paternity, knowing that the father's estate, if it has no assets or at least no assets other than what a child might claim, may not bother to contest the suit. In such a case a spurious allegation of paternity might provide the basis for awards of child insurance benefits, for certain life insurance or employee death benefits, for the inheritance of an intestate estate that might otherwise escheat to the state because the decedent had no known relatives, or for the proceeds of a legal judgment. The first and last incentives for a collusive paternity suit were present here and the suit was not contested, although, as we said, the probability seems slight that the allegation of paternity was spurious. We do not know, of course. We have pointed out that the grandmother had no stake in the wrongful-death suit and therefore no reason to resist the claim of paternity; nor did anyone else. But we do not rest our decision on any doubts that Glenn senior is the claimant's father.
Whether Indiana's five-month statute of limitations was motivated by a concern with preventing collusive paternity suits, or whether, as suggested in S.V. v. Estate of Bellamy, 579 N.E.2d 144, 148 (Ind.App.1991), the only concern was with the prompt winding up of estates (for remember that the five-month limitation is applicable only when the purpose of the paternity suit is to establish a right of inheritance), the policy behind the deadline would be impaired were the deadline deemed waived simply by not being pleaded. This makes it unlikely that the Indiana legislature intended the deadline to be an ordinary statute of limitations, which like other affirmative defenses is waived if the defendant fails to plead it. Its location in the statute is another clue that it is an element of the plaintiff's claim rather than an affirmative defense. Bocek v. Inter-Insurance Exchange, 175 Ind.App. 69, 369 N.E.2d 1093, 1097 (1977); General Motors Corp. v. Arnett, 418 N.E.2d 546, 548 (Ind.App.1981). The distinction between the two types of limitation is a familiar one in the law, Boggs v. Adams, 45 F.3d 1056, 1060 and n. 8 (7th Cir.1995), though it has been criticized as archaic. Tregenza v. Great American Communications Co., 12 F.3d 717, 719 (7th Cir.1993).
It is true that Indiana courts have sometimes construed deadlines for bringing paternity suits as mere statutes of limitations. In re Paternity of T.C.S., 576 N.E.2d 633 (Ind.App.1991); D.E.F. v. E.M., 173 Ind.App. 274, 363 N.E.2d 1030, 1032 (1977). But these were not cases in which the objective of the suit was to establish entitlement to inherit. Such a suit is governed by the five-month limitation, which if waivable would expose the settlement of decedents' estates to debilitating uncertainty. A new heir might appear, claiming a share of the estate, after the assets of the estate had been distributed to the known heirs, and the defendant in the paternity suit might fail, deliberately or inadvertently, to plead the statute of limitations. That is not an issue here, but we are considering whether the deadline would be waivable in suits brought under the Indiana statute, that is, suits to establish paternity for the purpose of inheritance. Bocek holds that time limits on the bringing of suits based on statutory rights are elements of the claim, and neither T.C.S. nor D.E.F. alludes to this principle; maybe it was not argued in those cases. Bocek does not stand alone. Two other Indiana cases hold that the identical five-month deadline for bringing suit against a decedent's estate is an element of the claim and not merely a statute of limitations. McEwen v. McEwen, 529 N.E.2d 355, 358-59 (Ind.App.1988); Rising Sun State Bank v. Fessler, 400 N.E.2d 1164, 1166 (Ind.App.1980). The statutory language at issue in those cases was more emphatic than the statutory language at issue here--it was that suits not brought within five months "shall be forever barred." Ind.Code § 29-1-14-1(a). But given the identity of the deadlines and the fact that both statutes are concerned with inheritance (and so presumably reflect the same desire for a swift resolution of decedents' estates), we would be surprised to find the deadline treated as an element of the claim in one and as a mere statute of limitations in the other. An argument could be made that the deadline should be tolled until the child was born, but Haas does not make the argument, perhaps because it was considered and rejected in S.V. v. Estate of Bellamy, supra, 579 N.E.2d at 145.
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Finley v. Astrue, 4:06CV01576 GTE/JTR.
...to preclude a constitutional attack on section 416(h)(2)(A) based on its incorporation of state intestacy law. See Haas v. Chater, 79 F.3d 559, 564 (7th Cir.1996) ("Congress has decided that, all other routes to demonstrating the likelihood of support being closed, if the child's state was ......