Knight v. Moore

• Decision Date: 01 April 1981
• Docket Number: No. 52393,52393
• Citation: 396 So.2d 31
• Parties: Walter KNIGHT v. Katie Ruth MOORE.
• Court: Mississippi Supreme Court

Page 31

396 So.2d 31

Walter KNIGHT v. Katie Ruth MOORE.

No. 52393.

Supreme Court of Mississippi.

April 1, 1981.

Forrest A. Johnson, Jr., Johnson & Johnson, Natchez, for appellant.

David W. Hall, Natchez, for appellee.

Before SMITH, LEE and HAWKINS, JJ.

SMITH, Presiding Justice, for the Court:

Katie Ruth Moore, a thirty-nine year old woman, brought suit in the Chancery Court of Adams County on the 13th day of September, 1978, against Walter Knight, alleging that she was his natural daughter, born out of wedlock, and demanding that she be declared his heir, capable of inheriting from him under the Mississippi laws of descent and distribution. From an adverse decree, this appeal is prosecuted on behalf of Walter Knight by his guardian.

Walter Knight had become mentally incompetent prior to 1975, and in that year he was placed in the Mississippi hospital for the insane at Whitfield, where he remains. It is admitted that, because of his mental condition, he is unable to recognize Katie Ruth Moore or anyone else and is now hopelessly insane. The present suit was defended on behalf of Walter Knight by a court appointed guardian.

Katie Ruth Moore, who reached her majority some eighteen years prior to the filing of the present suit, and her present husband, testified that from earliest childhood and throughout her life Katie Ruth Moore and Walter Knight had maintained a daughter-father relationship, that she called him "daddy" and he called her "daughter." Moreover, they testified, he "gave her away" as his daughter at both of her marriages. Upon this and other like testimony, the chancellor found that Katie Ruth Moore was the natural daughter of Walter Knight, product of an illicit relationship between him and her mother, and that Walter Knight had acknowledged Katie Ruth Moore as his daughter. He held, moreover, that Mississippi Code Annotated sections 91-1-15 and 93-9-29(5) (1972) unconstitutionally discriminated against illegitimates and, consequently, were invalid and entered a decree for Katie Ruth Moore.

There is no question, from her own testimony, that all of the facts and circumstances relied upon to establish heirship were well and thoroughly known to Katie Ruth Moore throughout her minority and the eighteen years which elapsed between the time she became twenty-one years of age and before she brought the present suit.

The suit is based upon a charge that Mississippi Code Annotated sections 91-1-15 and 93-9-29(5) (1972) unconstitutionally discriminate against illegitimates. In support of this view Katie Ruth Moore cites Trimble v. Gordon, 430 U.S. 762, 97 S.Ct. 1459, 52 L.Ed.2d 31 (1977).

Trimble, supra, involved the constitutionality of an Illinois statute which contained a dual requirement for inheritance by an illegitimate child from his father. The statute required that the child be acknowledged by the father during his lifetime and legitimated by the subsequent marriage of the parents.

The Court began its analysis by stating that the statute would be held constitutional if it was substantially related to a permissible state interest. Two state interests were advanced by proponents of the statute: the promotion of legitimate family relationships and the efficient disposal of an intestate decedent's property.

The Court recognized that the orderly disposition of interstate property was the stronger state interest stating that the statute bore "only the most attenuated relationship" to promoting legitimate family relationships. Id. at 768, 97 S.Ct. at 1464, 52 L.Ed.2d at 38.

The Court concluded that the Illinois statute was unconstitutional on equal protection grounds because the dual requirements eliminated a significant category of illegitimate children whose inheritance rights could be recognized without jeopardizing the orderly disposition of intestate property.

At the time of the conception of Katie Ruth Moore by her mother, thirty-nine years before the present suit was brought, Walter Knight was married to one Marguerite Perry Knight and continued married to her until her death on June 24, 1978. For that reason, and because of his mental incompetency, he was incapable of entering into a valid marriage with Katie Ruth Moore's mother.

In Lalli v. Lalli, 439 U.S. 259, 99 S.Ct. 518, 58 L.Ed.2d 503 (1978), the United States Supreme Court determined that New York's statute on inheritance by illegitimates was constitutional. The New York statute contained no marriage requirement. Instead the statute required that the paternity of the father be declared in a judicial proceeding sometime before the father's death in order for the illegitimate to inherit from his father. The Court found that the interest served by the statute the just and orderly disposition of property at death was a valid state interest and that the New York statute rationally promoted that interest.

It has been suggested that the legislative purpose in the enactment of the above Mississippi statutes was to discourage intercourse between the sexes outside of marriage. We cannot attribute to the Legislature a purpose of such obvious naivete. There are two recognized legitimate state interests which the statutes are designed to protect: the promotion of legitimate family relationships and the just and orderly disposal of an intestate decedent's property.

In view of the conclusion we have reached, however, it is not necessary in this case to pass upon the constitutionality of the Mississippi statutes. No case has been cited, and we find none, where, the facts were directly on all-fours with the facts here. We believe that the reasoning of the United States Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals in Franklin v. City of Marks, 439 F.2d 665 (1971), in dealing with alleged unconstitutional discrimination presents a closely analogous situation. In that case the Court said:

We know, however, that when a municipality provides inadequate services to residents "on the other side of the tracks" that this deprivation constitutes unlawful discrimination. Hawkins v. Town of Shaw, Mississippi, 5 Cir. 1970, 437 F.2d 1286. Here the plaintiffs were residents of the City of Marks at the time of the de-annexation proceeding. Undoubtedly, the Town of Shaw could not escape its federal constitutional and statutory obligations by a de-annexation proceeding. We know too that a change in location of polling places as a result of changes in municipal boundaries by annexation may have discriminatory purposes and effects and require federal scrutiny under the 1965 Voting Rights Act. Perkins v. Mathews, 1970, 400 U.S. 379, 91 S.Ct. 431, 27...