Little v. Smith

• Decision Date: 16 May 1997
• Docket Number: No. 95-0744,95-0744
• Citation: 943 S.W.2d 414
• Parties: 40 Tex. Sup. Ct. J. 278 Artymae LITTLE, As Independent Executrix of the Estate of Frank J. Little, M.D., et al., Petitioners, v. Katherine Irene Barber SMITH, Respondent.
• Court: Texas Supreme Court

Page 414

943 S.W.2d 414

40 Tex. Sup. Ct. J. 278

Artymae LITTLE, As Independent Executrix of the Estate of Frank J. Little, M.D., et al., Petitioners, v. Katherine Irene Barber SMITH, Respondent.

No. 95-0744.

Supreme Court of Texas.

Argued Nov. 30, 1995.

Decided Jan. 31, 1997.

Rehearing Overruled May 16, 1997.

Joseph W. Wolfe, James C. Tidwell, Sherman, B. Jay Carmichael, Dallas, for Petitioners.

R. Michael Northrup, Julia F. Pendery, Dallas, for Respondent.

OWEN, Justice, delivered the opinion of the Court, joined by PHILLIPS, Chief Justice, and GONZALEZ, HECHT, SPECTOR and ABBOTT, Justices.

Katherine Smith, who was adopted as an infant, brought this suit to assert the right to inherit from her biological grandmother and, alternatively, to obtain damages or equitable relief for wrongful exclusion from her grandmother's estate. We conclude that all of these claims are barred by statutes of limitations.

I

The trial court rendered summary judgment against Katherine Smith. Accordingly, we consider the facts in the light most favorable to her.

Smith was born in 1932 in Sherman, Texas. The next day, she was placed with Hope Cottage in Dallas, where she was subsequently adopted by W.L. and Katherine Barber. When Smith was about ten years old, Katherine Barber told Smith that she was adopted. In later conversations, Barber also revealed where Smith had been born and that she had been adopted through Hope Cottage, but did not reveal the identity of either of Smith's biological parents.

Many years later, Smith began to search for information about her natural parents when her adult son was diagnosed with a malignant tumor. By that time, Katherine Barber had died. Smith contacted Hope Cottage, which agreed to send her birth records to her with all information about the identity of her biological parents deleted. It was not until about two years later, in 1989 that Smith first obtained the names of her biological mother and father. Smith found a scrap of paper inside a metal box her adoptive mother had kept that said: "Thelma Little and Gus Eubanks. He is the son of the mayor of Sherman."

A few months later, in April 1989, Smith telephoned Dr. Frank Little, the brother of Thelma Little. Thelma Little had died twenty years earlier. Smith told Dr. Little she believed that she was the daughter of Thelma Little, to which Dr. Little responded, "I have a great deal of difficulty accepting your premise because in 1932 [the year Smith was born] I was 15 years old and living at home, as was Thelma, and I cannot believe I would not have known of her predicament had it existed." Smith asked for information about the family's history and health records, which Dr. Little supplied.

In October 1989, Smith filed a motion with a district court in Dallas County to obtain records from Hope Cottage, and she and Hope Cottage submitted an "Agreed Statement of Facts." The court signed an order granting Smith's motion on November 17, 1989, and Smith obtained an unredacted copy of Hope Cottage's record of her birth. This one page document identified Thelma Little as her mother, although it is not signed or acknowledged by Thelma Little or any member of her family. It appears to be an internal record kept by Hope Cottage.

Thereafter, Smith went to the Sherman public library and read the obituary of O.L. Little, Thelma Little's father, that referred to his ownership of cattle and oil interests in Grayson County. She then went to the Grayson County courthouse and made copies of wills, including that of Lula Little, her biological grandmother. Lula Little had died in 1982, leaving a will that was filed for probate by her son Dr. Frank Little that same year. Lula Little had four other children (Thelma Little Hart, Mary Little Rogers, Bettie Sue Little LeBrun, and Geraldine Little Dowden), who, along with Dr. Little, were named as beneficiaries under the will and were to receive equal shares of the estate. Two of Lula Little's children, including Thelma Little Hart, had predeceased her. Thelma Little Hart was survived by two children born during her marriage to Sterling Hart, but her sister had died leaving no heirs. Under the antilapse statute, TEX. PROB.CODE § 68, Dr. Little distributed a one-fourth interest to each of the three surviving children of Lula Little, and the one-fourth share of Lula Little's estate that would have gone to Thelma was distributed to Thelma's two children from her marriage to Hart.

Smith brought this action in November 1991, almost eight years after Dr. Little had made the final distribution of Lula Little's estate and had filed an affidavit closing the administration of that estate on December 31, 1983. ¹ Smith's causes of action fall into two categories. She essentially demands a one-twelfth interest in the assets of the estate of Lula Little by various means, including a declaratory judgment, a claim for an accounting, a claim for a constructive trust, and a claim for partition. The value of this one-twelfth interest is approximately $33,000. Smith also asserts derivative claims against Dr. Little and other heirs including breach of fiduciary duty, gross negligence, "constructive fraud," and conspiracy, and she seeks actual and punitive damages.

The defendants moved for summary judgment, asserting limitations. They relied on the general four-year statute, TEX. CIV. PRAC. & REM.CODE § 16.051, because it had the longest period of limitations among the statutes that were arguably applicable. The defendants further maintained in their motion that Dr. Little should have no liability for his failure to "conduct a global search" for Smith, assuming for the purposes of the summary judgment motion that Dr. Little was aware that his sister had given birth to a child out of wedlock. The defendants contended that Dr. Little would not know the identity or location of the child and that the adoption records were sealed. The defendants also included a broader assertion denominated in their motion as "public policy," arguing that probate proceedings should be final.

Smith countered that the discovery rule applied and that her causes of action did not accrue until November 17, 1989, the date the district court in Dallas signed the order giving her access to Hope Cottage's records, or December 8 of that year, the day her attorney actually received the records. In this Court, she has also contended that her "right to bring a declaratory judgment action ... did not accrue until [April] 1989 when Defendants denied that she was a rightful heir."

The trial court rendered summary judgment in favor of the defendants. Smith appealed. The court of appeals held that the claims for an interest in the estate were barred by limitations, but concluded that the discovery rule applied to Smith's claims of fraud, conspiracy, breach of fiduciary duty, and gross negligence. 903 S.W.2d 780, 786-88. The court of appeals found that there were fact questions as to when Smith should have known that Thelma Little was her natural mother and when Smith should have known that she had been excluded from Lula Little's estate. Id. at 786-87. All parties seek review in this Court.

II

There are competing interests under various Texas statutes at issue in this case: (1) the right of adoptees to inherit from or through their natural parents, (2) the confidentiality of the identities of birth parents and their families, and (3) the need for finality of probate proceedings. We must determine whether the discovery rule should apply in cases of this nature to extend, perhaps for decades, the period of time within which adoptees may bring suit to assert rights of inheritance. In weighing the competing interests identified by the Legislature, we conclude that the need for finality of probate proceedings and the degree of confidentiality the Legislature has seen fit to extend to the adoption process are paramount. We consider first the claims that in essence seek a share of Lula Little's estate.

Statutes of limitations afford plaintiffs a period of time that the Legislature deems reasonable to present claims, and such statutes cut off the pursuit of cases in which "the search for truth may be seriously impaired by the loss of evidence, whether by death or disappearance of witnesses, fading memories, disappearance of documents or otherwise." S.V. v. R.V., 933 S.W.2d 1, 3 (Tex.1996) (quoting Murray v. San Jacinto Agency, Inc., 800 S.W.2d 826, 828 (Tex.1990)). Statutes of limitations impose finality.

The need for finality of probate proceedings is well-recognized by this and other courts. A state's interest in the orderly disposition of decedents' estates was said by the United States Supreme Court to "justif[y] the enforcement of generally applicable limitations on the time and manner in which claims may be asserted," even though those limitations may cut off the right of an illegitimate child to inherit. Reed v. Campbell, 476 U.S. 852, 855, 106 S.Ct. 2234, 2237, 90 L.Ed.2d 858 (1986). The Supreme Court held in Reed that a Texas statute prohibiting an illegitimate child from inheriting from her father unless her parents had subsequently married was unconstitutional. Id. at 856, 106 S.Ct. at 2237-38. It found that the state's disapproval of the conduct of the child's parents was insufficient to justify discriminatory treatment of the child. Id. at 854 n. 5, 106 S.Ct. at 2237 n. 5. However, imposition of limitations to narrow the time within which such claims could be asserted would "of course" be justified. Id. at 855, 106 S.Ct. at 2237; see also Lalli v. Lalli, 439 U.S. 259, 268, 99 S.Ct. 518, 524-25, 58 L.Ed.2d 503 (1978) ("We have long recognized" that a state's goal to provide for the just and orderly disposition of property at death "is an area with which the States have an interest of considerable magnitude.").

This Court recognized that there should be a definite time limit for presenting a claim against an estate in Mooney v. Harlin, 622 S.W.2d...