E.L. v. V.L. (Ex parte E.L.)

• Decision Date: 18 September 2015
• Docket Number: 1140595.
• Citation: 208 So.3d 1102
• Parties: Ex parte E.L. (In re E.L. v. V.L.).
• Court: Alabama Supreme Court

208 So.3d 1102

Ex parte E.L.

(In re E.L.

v.V.L.).

1140595.

Supreme Court of Alabama.

Sept. 18, 2015. On Remand from the United States Supreme Court May 27, 2016.

Randall W. Nichols and Anne Lamkin Durward of Massey, Stotser & Nichols, PC, Birmingham, for petitioner.

Traci Owen Vella of Vella & King, Birmingham; and Catherine Sakimura, National Center for Lesbian Rights, San Francisco, California, for respondent.

Tobie J. Smith, Legal Aid Society of Birmingham, Birmingham, guardian ad litem.

Bryant A. Whitmire, Jr., Birmingham, for amici curiae The American Academy of Adoption Attorneys Inc., and Georgia Council of Adoption Lawyers, in support of the respondent.

PER CURIAM.

This Court granted the petition filed by E.L. seeking certiorari review of the judgment entered by the Court of Civil Appeals affirming the judgment entered by the Jefferson Family Court insofar as that judgment recognized and gave effect to an adoption decree entered by the Superior Court of Fulton County, Georgia ("the Georgia court"), approving the adoption by V.L., E.L.'s former same-sex partner, of E.L.'s biological children, S.L., N.L., and H.L. (hereinafter referred to collectively as "the children"). We reverse and remand.

I.

E.L. and V.L. were involved in a relationship from approximately 1995 through 2011. During the course of that relationship, they maintained a residence in Hoover. In December 2002 E.L. gave birth to S.L., and in November 2004 E.L. gave birth to twins, N.L. and H.L. All births were achieved through the use of assisted-reproductive technology. It is undisputed that, following the births of the children, V.L. acted as a parent to them, and, consistent with that fact, the parties eventually made the joint decision to take legal action to formalize and to protect the parental role V.L. had undertaken. V.L. explained this decision as follows in an affidavit filed with the Jefferson Family Court after initiating this action:

"We began researching second-parent and co-parent adoptions. We had heard through friends that Fulton County, Georgia, was receptive to same-sex parents seeking such. I could not find an attorney in Birmingham that had any knowledge of such or that was very helpful. In the fall of 2006 we met with an attorney in Atlanta, Georgia, to seek legal advice. We were informed that I needed to be a resident of the state of Georgia, specifically Fulton County, for at least six (6) months to petition for adoption in Fulton County. E.L. spoke with a friend from college ... that lives in Atlanta and her friend's mother owned a house in Alpharetta. We went to Atlanta and looked over the home and spent time with [E.L.'s] friend and her family, including [the friend's] mother. [The friend's] mother ... offered up her house for rent to us. [E.L.] and I both signed a lease for the Alpharetta residence on October 1, 2006. I submitted fingerprints to the FBI which were obtained in Alpharetta on January 25, 2007, also part of the adoption process. A background check request was submitted using the Alpharetta address. On March 26, 2007, a home study was done at the address in Georgia; per my attorney this was a requirement for petitioning for adoption. Our family of five (5) was all present."

E.L. does not dispute these basic facts; however, she states in her own affidavit filed with the Jefferson Family Court that, although the parties leased the Alpharetta house, they never spent more than approximately two nights in it, instead continuing to live at their Hoover residence and to work at their jobs in Alabama.

On April 10, 2007, V.L. filed in the Georgia court a petition to adopt the children. E.L. subsequently filed with the Georgia court a document labeled "parental consent to adoption" in which she stated that she consented to V.L.'s adopting the children and that, although she was not relinquishing or surrendering her own parental rights, she desired that the requested adoption would "have the legal result that [V.L.] and [the children] will also have a legal parent-child relationship with legal rights and responsibilities equal to mine through establishment of their legal relationship by adoption." On May 30, 2007, the Georgia court entered its final decree of adoption ("the Georgia judgment") granting V.L.'s petition and declaring that "[V.L.] shall be permitted to adopt [the children] as her children." New birth certificates were subsequently issued for the children listing V.L. as a parent.

In approximately November 2011, E.L. and V.L. ended their relationship, and, in January 2012, V.L. moved out of the house E.L. and V.L. had previously shared. On October 31, 2013, V.L. filed a petition in the Jefferson Circuit Court alleging that E.L. had denied her access to the children and had interfered with her ability to exercise her traditional and constitutional parental rights. Accordingly, she asked the court to register the Georgia judgment, to declare her legal rights pursuant to the Georgia judgment, and to award her some measure of custody of or visitation with the children. The matter was transferred to the Jefferson Family Court, and E.L. subsequently moved that court to dismiss V.L.'s petition on multiple grounds. Both parties subsequently filed additional memoranda and the above-referenced affidavits regarding E.L.'s motion to dismiss.

On April 3, 2014, the Jefferson Family Court denied E.L.'s motion to dismiss, without a hearing, and simultaneously awarded V.L. scheduled visitation with the children. On April 15, 2014, the Jefferson Family Court entered an additional order noting that all other relief requested by the parties was denied and that the court considered the case closed. E.L. promptly moved the court to alter, amend, or vacate its judgment; however, on May 1, 2014, that motion was denied by operation of law, and, on May 12, 2014, E.L. filed her notice of appeal to the Court of Civil Appeals.¹

Before the Court of Civil Appeals, E.L. argued (1) that the Jefferson Family Court lacked subject-matter jurisdiction to rule on V.L.'s petition; (2) that the Georgia court lacked subject-matter jurisdiction to enter the Georgia judgment; (3) that the Jefferson Family Court should have refused to recognize and to enforce the Georgia judgment for public-policy reasons; and (4) that the Jefferson Family Court denied her due process inasmuch as it awarded V.L. visitation rights without holding an evidentiary hearing at which E.L. could be heard. On February 27, 2015, the Court of Civil Appeals released its opinion rejecting the first three of these arguments, but holding that the Jefferson Family Court had erred by awarding V.L. visitation without conducting an evidentiary hearing. E.L. v. V.L., 208 So.3d 1094, 1102 (Ala.Civ.App.2015). Accordingly, the judgment of the Jefferson Family Court was reversed and the case remanded for the Jefferson Family Court to conduct an evidentiary hearing before deciding the visitation issue; however, the implicit finding in the judgment of the Jefferson Family Court that the Georgia judgment was valid and subject to enforcement in Alabama was upheld. See E.L. v. V.L., 208 So.3d at 1098 ("At oral argument, the parties all agreed that, in its judgment, the family court impliedly enforced the Georgia judgment by recognizing V.L.'s right to visitation as an adoptive parent of the children.").

On March 11, 2015, E.L. petitioned this Court for a writ of certiorari to review the Court of Civil Appeals' affirmance of the judgment of the Jefferson Family Court to the extent that judgment recognized and enforced the Georgia judgment. On April 15, 2015, we granted E.L.'s petition seeking certiorari review and set the briefing schedule for the parties.²

II.

The issues raised by E.L. in this appeal regarding the effect and validity Alabama courts should afford the Georgia judgment are purely issues of law. Accordingly, we review those issues de novo. Ex parte Byrom, 47 So.3d 791, 794 (Ala.2010). We emphasize, however, that our review of those issues does not extend to a review of the legal merits of the Georgia judgment, because we are prohibited from making any inquiry into the merits of the Georgia judgment by Art. IV, § 1, of the United States Constitution ("the full faith and credit clause").³ Pirtek USA, LLC v. Whitehead, 51 So.3d 291, 296 (Ala.2010). We further "note that ‘[t]he validity and effect of a foreign judgment, of course, are to be determined by the law of the state in which it was rendered.’ " Orix Fin. Servs., Inc. v. Murphy, 9 So.3d 1241, 1244 (Ala.2008) (quoting Morse v. Morse, 394 So.2d 950, 951 (Ala.1981) ).

III.

The gravamen of E.L.'s appeal is that the Jefferson Family Court erred by recognizing and enforcing the Georgia judgment. When considering such a claim—whether a foreign judgment should be enforced in this State—we are guided by the principle that we generally accord the judgment of another state the same respect and credit it would receive in the rendering state. This principle stems from the full faith and credit clause and was explained as follows by Chief Justice John Marshall in Hampton v. McConnel, 16 U.S. (3 Wheat.) 234, 235, 4 L.Ed. 378 (1818) :

"[T]he judgment of a state court should have the same credit, validity and effect, in every other court of the United States, which it had in the state where it was pronounced, and that whatever pleas would be good to a suit thereon in such state, and none others, could be pleaded in any other court in the United States."

The courts of this State have consistently applied the full faith and credit clause in this manner. See, e.g., Ohio Bureau of Credits, Inc. v. Steinberg, 29 Ala.App. 515, 519, 199 So. 246, 249 (1940) (stating that "the duly attested record of the judgment of a State court is entitled to such faith and credit in every court within the United States as by law or usage it had in the State from which it is taken"), and Pirtek, 51 So.3d at 295 (stating that " ‘Alabama courts are generally required to give a...