Shondel J. v. Mark D.

• Decision Date: 06 July 2006
• Citation: 7 N.Y.3d 320,853 N.E.2d 610
• Parties: In the Matter of SHONDEL J., Respondent, v. MARK D., Appellant.
• Court: New York Court of Appeals Court of Appeals

Page 610

853 N.E.2d 610

7 N.Y.3d 320

In the Matter of SHONDEL J., Respondent, v. MARK D., Appellant.

Court of Appeals of New York.

July 6, 2006.

Ann L. Detiere, New York City, for appellant.

Steven P. Forbes, Jamaica, for respondent.

Children's Law Center, Brooklyn (Barbara H. Dildine, Carol Sherman and Janet Neustaetter of counsel), Law Guardian.

Louis Kiefer, Hartford, Connecticut, for U.S. Citizens against Paternity Fraud and another, amici curiae.

OPINION OF THE COURT

ROSENBLATT, J.

In this child support proceeding, we hold that a man who has mistakenly represented himself as a child's father may be estopped from denying paternity, and made to pay child support, when the child justifiably relied on the man's representation of paternity, to the child's detriment. We reach this conclusion based on the best interests of the child as set forth by the Legislature.

I.

In January 1996, Shondel J. gave birth to a daughter in Guyana, where she then resided, and in a birth registration document named Mark D. as the father. Shondel and Mark had dated the previous spring in Guyana and had sexual intercourse.

Although Mark was in New York when the child was born, he provided financial support for the child and returned to Guyana later in the year to see her. In a sworn statement, notarized by the Guyana Consul-General in New York in January 1996, Mark declared that he was "convinced" that he was the child's father and accepted "all paternal responsibilities including child support." In 1998 he signed a Guyana registry, stating that he was her father and authorizing the change of her last name to his. Mark named the child the primary beneficiary on his life insurance policy, identifying her as his daughter. He also sent Shondel money monthly for the child's support from her birth until June 1999 and then less regularly through the summer of 2000.

In August 2000, Shondel commenced a Family Court Act article 5 proceeding alleging that Mark is the father and seeking orders of filiation and support. Initially, Mark did not contest paternity. On the contrary, in September 2000, when the child was 4½ years old, Mark commenced a Family Court Act article 6 proceeding, seeking visitation. In his petition, he stated that he was the child's father, and that he loved her and wished to "spend quality time with her on a regularly scheduled basis."

In October 2000, however, when appearing before a Family Court hearing examiner to answer Shondel's petition, Mark requested DNA testing. The hearing examiner ordered genetic marker tests, which revealed that Mark is not the child's biological father. The hearing examiner then dismissed Shondel's paternity petition, and Mark abandoned his petition for visitation, having severed his relationship with the child. Shondel objected to the hearing examiner's order, expressing doubts about the laboratory tests and stating that she would be able to show that Mark had always recognized the child as his. Realizing that the hearing examiner had exceeded her authority in dismissing Shondel's petition, Family Court sustained her objection and appointed a law guardian for the child.

In October 2001, the Law Guardian reported that Mark had acted as the father of the child, who in turn considered him her father. Family Court set the matter down for a trial on equitable estoppel and ordered another set of tests. A blood genetic marker test confirmed that Mark is not the child's biological father.

At the estoppel trial, Family Court heard widely diverging testimony from Shondel and Mark. According to Shondel's testimony, Mark spent time with her and the child when they traveled to the United States in 1996 and 1997, seeing them "every day" for about six weeks in the summer of 1997 in New York; continued to visit the child and take her out after his relationship with Shondel soured in 1998; bought the child toys, clothes and other gifts; took the child to meet his parents; told his family that she was his daughter; regularly spoke with the child by telephone; referred to himself as "daddy" when talking with the child; and visited the child "almost every other day" in August 1999 and "almost every other day" between the time Shondel and the child moved to New York in January 2000 and the commencement of this litigation.

Mark denied all of this, asserting that he had seen the child only four times since her birth; that he had not acknowledged the child as his; that he had not introduced the child to his family or friends as his child; that he had not sent the child birthday or Christmas gifts; and that he had never visited her. Mark testified that he twice asked Shondel to submit to a blood test to determine whether he was the father of her child. Shondel insisted that he did not.

Family Court believed Shondel "entirely" and found Mark's testimony incredible. It ruled that Mark "held himself out as [the] child's father, and behaved in every way as if he was the father, albeit a father who didn't reside for a good part of the child's life, in the same country." These affirmed findings of Family Court have support in the record and are binding on this Court.

Family Court entered an order of filiation and awarded child support retroactive to the date Shondel commenced the Family Court proceeding. The Appellate Division affirmed, concluding that "Family Court properly determined that it was in the best interests of the subject child to equitably estop [Mark] from denying paternity" (6 A.D.3d 437, 774 N.Y.S.2d 366 [2004]).¹ We agree, based on our precedents, the affirmed findings of fact and the legislative recognition of paternity by estoppel.

II.

The purpose of equitable estoppel is to preclude a person from asserting a right after having led another to form the reasonable belief that the right would not be asserted, and loss or prejudice to the other would result if the right were asserted. The law imposes the doctrine as a matter of fairness. Its purpose is to prevent someone from enforcing rights that would work injustice on the person against whom enforcement is sought and who, while justifiably relying on the opposing party's actions, has been misled into a detrimental change of position (see generally Nassau Trust Co. v. Montrose Concrete Prods. Corp., 56 N.Y.2d 175, 184, 451 N.Y.S.2d 663, 436 N.E.2d 1265 [1982]).

New York courts have long applied the doctrine of estoppel in paternity and support proceedings. Our reason has been and continues to be the best interests of the child (Jean Maby H. v. Joseph H., 246 A.D.2d 282, 285, 676 N.Y.S.2d 677 [2d Dept.1998]; see generally Matter of L. Pamela P. v. Frank S., 59 N.Y.2d 1, 5, 462 N.Y.S.2d 819, 449 N.E.2d 713 [1983]).

Although it originated in case law, paternity by estoppel is now secured by statute in New York (see Family Ct Act § 418[a]; § 532[a]). For that reason, and contrary to Mark's assertions, it is not for us to decide whether the doctrine has a rightful place in New York law. Clearly it does, in the absence of legislative repeal or a determination of unconstitutionality. Mark argues for the first time in this appeal that sections 418(a) and 532(a) are unconstitutional and deprive him of due process. As this claim was not raised in the courts below, we do not entertain it.

Equitable estoppel is gender neutral. In Matter of Sharon GG. v. Duane HH., 63 N.Y.2d 859, 482 N.Y.S.2d 270, 472 N.E.2d 46 (1984), affg. 95 A.D.2d 466, 467 N.Y.S.2d 941 (3d Dept.1983), we affirmed an order of the Appellate Division dismissing a paternity petition in which a mother sought to compel her husband to submit to a blood test as a means of challenging his paternity. We agreed with the Appellate Division that the mother should be estopped. As that Court pointed out, the mother expressed no question about her child's paternity until some 2½ years after the child's birth. She had held the child out as her husband's, accepted his support for the child while she and her husband lived together and after they separated, and permitted her husband and child to form strong ties together.

Estoppel may also preclude a man who claims to be a child's biological father from asserting his paternity when he acquiesced in the establishment of a strong parent-child bond between the child and another man. The rationale is that the child would be harmed by a determination that someone else is the biological father. For example, in Purificati v. Paricos, 154 A.D.2d 360, 545 N.Y.S.2d 837 (2d Dept 1989), a boy's biological father who did not seek to establish his paternity until more than three years after the child's birth, and who acquiesced as a relationship flourished between the boy and his mother's former husband, was estopped from claiming paternity. The courts "impose equitable estoppel to protect the status interests of a child in an already recognized and operative parent-child relationship" (Matter of Baby Boy C., 84 N.Y.2d 91, 102 n., 615 N.Y.S.2d 318, 638 N.E.2d 963 [1994]).

Finally, the Appellate Division has repeatedly concluded that a man who has held himself out to be the father of a child, so that a parent-child relationship developed between the two, may be estopped from denying paternity.² Where a child justifiably relies on the representations of a man that he is her father with the result that she will be harmed by the man's denial of paternity, the man may be estopped from asserting that denial.³

III.

Mark represented that he was the father of the child, and she justifiably relied on this representation, changing her position by forming a bond with him, to her ultimate detriment. He is therefore estopped from denying paternity.

Mark expressly represented that he was the father of Shondel's child in the notarized sworn statement and in the Guyana registry in which he gave the child his name, as well as in the visitation petition filed with Family Court. Further, Mark held himself out as the child's father, and behaved in every way as if he was...