Lanferman v. Vanzile

• Decision Date: 26 November 1912
• Citation: 150 Ky. 751,150 S.W. 1008
• Parties: LANFERMAN et al. v. VANZILE.
• Court: Kentucky Court of Appeals

150 S.W. 1008

150 Ky. 751

LANFERMAN et al. v. VANZILE.

Court of Appeals of Kentucky.

November 26, 1912

Dissenting Opinion November 29, 1912.

Winn Settle, and Lassing, JJ., dissenting.

Appeal from Circuit Court, Kenton County, Common Law and Equity Division.

Suit by Margurite Lanferman and others for partition of the estate of Henry Lanferman, deceased, contested by Clara Vanzile. Judgment for Clara Vanzile, and Margurite Lanferman and others appeal. Reversed and remanded.

Edward J. Tracey, for appellants.

R. G Williams, of Covington, and O'Rear & Williams, of Frankfort, for appellee.

HOBSON C.J.

Henry Lanferman and his first wife, Anna Lanferman, by a proceeding duly had, adopted, on June 12, 1891, Albert Urlage, who was then 17 months old. His foster parents took him to their house and reared and educated him as if he was their natural child; he being known as Albert Lanferman. They afterwards had three children of their own. The wife died, intestate and Henry Lanferman married a second time. He then died intestate, leaving property in the city of Covington. After the death of Henry Lanferman, the adopted child, Albert Lanferman, died unmarried, and without issue, in his infancy. A partition suit was instituted to divide the estate of Henry Lanferman among his three children. In this proceeding Clara Vanzile, the natural mother of the adopted child, Albert Lanferman, filed her petition, claiming that he took, at the death of his foster father, an undivided one-fourth of the estate, and that this one-fourth descended, at his death, to her. The three children of Henry Lanferman demurred to this pleading. The court overruled their demurrer, and, they failing to plead further, judgment was entered in favor of Clara Vanzile for one-fourth of the property. The appeal.

The case turns on the rights of adopted children under our Statutes. Section 2071, Ky. Statutes, provides that an adopted child shall be, "as such, capable of inheriting as though such person were the child of such petitioner." In Power v. Hafley, 85 Ky. 671, 4 S.W. 683, 9 Ky. Law Rep. 369, the adopted daughter died, leaving two children, before the death of her foster father, and it was insisted that, as she died before her foster father, neither she nor her children took any interest in his estate. Rejecting this contention, the court summed up its conclusions from the authorities, as follows: "That it is the event of adoption that fixes, under the law authorizing the adoption, the legal status of the adopted child; and the child, by the event of adoption, becomes the legal child of the adopting parent, and stands, as to the property of the adopting parent, in the same light as a child born in lawful wedlock, save in so far as the exceptions in the statute authorizing the adoption declare otherwise. And when the statute authorizes a full and complete adoption the child adopted thereunder acquires all of the legal rights and capacities, including that of inheritance, of a natural child, and is under the same duties. *** So, taking the logical sequence of the language of the act, supra, aided as it is by the principles of the civil law, the conclusion is inevitable that the appellants are the legal grandchildren of Frederick Hafley, and as such are entitled to share in the distribution of his estate under our laws of descent."

In Atchison v. Atchison, 89 Ky. 488, 12 S.W. 942, 11 Ky. Law Rep. 705, the foster father died, leaving no children except the adopted child, and the widow insisted that he had died "without issue" and that she was entitled to one-half of the surplus personal property, under the statute. Rejecting the contention of the widow, and citing, with approval, Humphries v. Davis, 100 Ind. 369, which will hereafter be referred to, the court said: "The mode of descent and distribution is regulated by the statute, under which all of these parties would have taken if there had been no will; and when the adoptive father dies intestate the child, inheriting as if, in fact, the child of the decedent, can take in no other mode than that pointed out in the statute. What interest, then, has the widow of the adoptive father in her husband's estate? If he left a child to inherit his estate, then the widow, in distributing the personalty, would be entitled to one-third of the surplus, and, if no children, to one-half. In determining the extent of the window's interest in the personalty, regardless of the statute, the word 'issue' has always been construed to mean a child or children, or their descendants, born of the marriage and capable of taking at the death of the intestate; but the statute in question has intervened, and on the application of both husband and wife the adopted child is made to inherit in the same manner as if a child in fact."

The statute regulating the descent of real estate is section 1393, Ky. Statutes, which provides that when a person shall die intestate his real estate shall descend "first, to his children and their descendants"; but section 1401, which is a part of the same chapter, and is one of the limitations upon section 1393, is as follows: "If an infant dies without issue, having title to real estate derived by gift, devise or descent from one of his parents, the whole shall descend to that parent and his or her kindred as hereinbefore directed, if there is any; and, if none, then in like manner to the other parent and his or her kindred; but the kindred of one shall not be so excluded by the kindred of the other parent if the latter is more remote than the grandfather, grandmother, uncles and aunts of the intestate and their descendants."

The purpose of section 1401 is to prevent the estate of a parent from being distributed to strangers to his blood, when any of his children die in infancy, without issue. The natural child, who inherits, under section 1393, property from his father, takes it subject to this limitation--that is, subject to the limitation that if he died in infancy, and without issue, it goes exclusively to his father's kindred, as provided in section 1401--but the adopted child is by his adoption placed on the footing of a natural child. He takes, under the statute, "as though he were the child." It was not the purpose of the statute to give him greater rights than a natural child, or to release him from the limitations imposed upon the inheritance in the hands of a natural child. When it provided that the adopted child should take "as though he were the child," can it be believed that the Legislature intended that the property inherited by a natural child should not go to a stranger to the father's blood, when the child dies without issue and under 21 years old, but that if the adopted child should so die this property should go to strangers of the father's blood? Section 460, Kentucky Statutes, provides: "The rule of the common law, that statutes in derogation thereof are to be strictly construed, is not to apply to this revision; on the contrary, its provisions are to be liberally construed with a view to promote its objects."

The statute must be liberally construed with a view to permit its purposes, and when so construed no reason can be assigned for exempting the adopted child from the rule governing a natural child, when he dies in infancy and without issue. In Merritt v. Morton, 143 Ky. 133, 136 S.W. 133, 33 L. R. A. (N. S.) 139, we held that an adopted child did not inherit from the mother of his foster mother; the ruling being based upon the ground that the statute makes the person adopted capable of inheriting from the person adopting him as if he were his natural child, but does not make him capable of inheriting from other persons. This ruling seems to be in accord with authorities everywhere. It is also universally held, under similar statutes, that the person adopting a child does not thereby become capable of inheriting property from the child, unless it is so provided in the statute; but neither of these principles have any application here. The question here is simply: What is the proper construction of the statute? Was it intended to put the adopted child on the same footing as the natural child, and does he take his inheritance subject to the same limitations, if he dies in infancy and without issue? In Humphries v. Davis, 100 Ind. 369, which was, as we have said, cited with approval by this court in Atchison v. Atchison, supra, a child was adopted by a husband and wife. The wife died, and the child inherited the property from her. The child then died, without issue. It was held that this property went to the surviving husband, and not to the mother of the child. In this case the court overruled an earlier decision holding otherwise, basing its conclusions on the fact that adoption has been borrowed from the Roman law, and that under the Roman law, when an adopted child died in infancy, without issue, the property went back to that parent's heirs from whom it came.

We have examined, with great care, the decisions in other states; but they usually turn on the phraseology of the statute there in force, and so, in the end, this case must depend upon the construction of our statute.

In Bailey v. Commonwealth, 11 Bush, 691, the court said "Words in a statute were always to be understood according to the approved use of language. But there are other rules of construction of equal dignity and importance which must not be overlooked, and which, although not incorporated in our statute, are as binding upon the courts as if embodied in it. One of these rules is that 'every statute ought to be expounded, not according to the letter, but according to the meaning;' and another that 'every interpretation that leads to an absurdity ought to be rejected;' and still another that a law...