King v. King

129 S.E.2d 147, 218 Ga. 534, 1962 Ga. LEXIS 555

• Court: Supreme Court of Georgia
• Decided: December 3, 1962
• Docket: 21796
• Status: Published

Opinions

Mobley, Justice.

Which law governs in determining whether these children are “children” within the meaning of the trusts, the law of Louisiana, where their mother, Maxine, her legal husband, Leonard Fallin, and Charles Hilary King were all domiciled at the time of the children’s birth, or the law of Georgia, where the trusts were executed, where, at the time they were signed and delivered, all the parties, including the trustors, trustees, and beneficiaries lived, and where the trust res has always since been kept and managed?

Defendants in error contend that Georgia law does not control the rights of plaintiffs in error to take under the trust instruments because their rights depend upon who they are, that is, whether or not they are children of King; that this involves paternity, and paternity, viz., status, depends on the law of the “domicile of origin” of these children; that only after it is determined who they are, whether or not they are children of King, does any question of interpretation of Georgia law as to the meaning of the instruments arise.

On the other hand, plaintiffs in error contend that even should .the law of Louisiana, the domicile of King, Fallin and Maxine, govern in determining their legitimate or illegitimate status, the controlling question is the intention of the trustors when they made the trusts, that is, whom did they have in mind when they named as beneficiaries the “children” of Charles Hillary King? Their intention as to what law should govern must be controlling say plaintiffs in error, citing the case of Love v. Fulton Nat. Bank of Atlanta, 213 Ga. 887, 891 (102 ), where this court said, “In construing a trust instrument, it is the duty of a court to find the intention of the settlor and to effectuate that intention in so far as the language used and the rules of law permit.”

“The validity, form, and effect of all writings or contracts are determined by the laws of the place where executed. . .” Code § 102-108. The validity and form of the trusts are not at issue, but the effect is. The primary purpose of a trust is to provide for the beneficiaries thereof. The ultimate effect of a trust is payment to the beneficiaries; but before payment can be made, the beneficiaries must be determined. Therefore, to determine the effect of a trust, the beneficiaries must be determined. Applying Code § 102-108 as to the effect of the trust, it is clear that Georgia law will control the determination of the question whether or not the children here involved come within the terms of the trust. See National City Bank of Rome v. First Nat. Bank of Birmingham, 193 Ga. 477, 488 (19 SE2d 19); 11 Am. Jur. 382, 383, Conflict of Laws, § 95.

While a person’s “status,” his legitimacy or paternity, is generally, as defendants in error argue, fixed by the law- of his domicile, in determining the effect of these trusts we must determine what law the trustors intended to control when they executed the trusts. See Love v. Fulton Nat. Bank of Atlanta, 213 Ga. 887, 892, supra. “It is generally agreed that the law of the place where the contract is made is prima facie that which the parties intended . . . and that such law ought, therefore, to prevail. . .” 11 Am. Jur. 405, 406, Conflict of Laws, § 119.

Where no trust, will or deed is involved, as where the question is one of intestate succession, “the status of legitimacy is created by the law of the domicile of the parent whose relationship to the child is in question” (Restatement of the Law, Conflict of Laws, § 137, p. 204); but “a trust of movables created by an instrument inter vivos is administered by the trustee according to the law of the state where the instrument creating the trust locates the administration of the trust.” Restatement of the Law, Conflict of Laws, § 297, p. 379. The latter section further points out that administration includes determining who shall receive the income, that is, who are the beneficiaries.

In Bernheimer v. First Nat. Bank, 359 Mo. 1119 (225 SW2d 745), the Supreme Court of Missouri in a well-reasoned opinion, dealing with a state of facts practically identical to these here, where a trustor, a resident of Missouri, created a testamentary trust for her son and the "lawful issue of [his] body,” held that the law of Missouri governed in determining whether a child born to the son in California of an invalid ceremonial marriage should take under the trust. There, counsel, contending that the law of the place of birth should control, agreed that the law of Missouri, the locus of the trust, governed in determining what class of persons was contemplated by the phrase “lawful issue of [his] body” in the will, but contended that whether a particular person came within that class should be determined by the law of the jurisdiction where he acquired a personal status that would bring him into the general class, citing several authorities therefor. The Missouri court said in respect thereto (p. 1131): “But on examination it will be found the citations in the preceding two paragraphs generally concede that where the devolution of property, especially personalty, depends on the provisions of a will and not statutes of inheritance, the intention manifested by the will is controlling as to both the general class and the status of the particular person. . . And the will must be construed under the. laws of the state where the testator resided, made it and died. We think the instant will and the surrounding-facts disclose that it was written with the law of Missouri in mind.”

The Missouri court pointed out further that for the purpose of ascertaining a testator’s meaning and intention, the law of the testator’s domicile governs, and the basis of this rule is the presumption that the maker of a will is more familiar with the law of his domicile than with the law of other jurisdictions and that the will is written with the law of his domicile in mind.

We are of the opinion that to apply the law of Georgia in determining whether these children come within the meaning of the trust instruments is sound, gives stability to the law, and will carry out the intention of the trustors.

Much of the argument of counsel has been devoted to the issue of paternity. Under the view we take of the case, it is unnecessary to resolve the many questions which revolve around this issue because even if in fact Aaron David and Lee Dan Chester are children of Charles Hilary King, which question we do not decide, we do not believe that they are such children as the trustors intented to be the objects of their bounty. We believe the controlling question to be whether or not the trustors intended the word “children” as they employ it in their trusts to include as beneficiaries thereof persons such as Aaron David and Lee Dan Chester, and it is our opinion and judgment that they did not.

The factual situation to which the rules of law must be applied to reach our judgment is as follows: At the time of the purported marriage of Charles and Maxine, Maxine was married to Leonard Fallin, from whom she has never been divorced, and was living with Fallin and their two children. King met Mrs. Fallin at a night club which he frequented and where Mrs. Fallin was employed as an “exotic dancer.” On the day of their “marriage” they and other persons were drinking and drove to Mississippi where a marriage license was procured, Maxine giving a false name and address, and where a marriage ceremony was performed. About three weeks after the “marriage” Maxine informed Charles of her husband and children. Thereafter Charles King and Leonard Fallin met. At the time of the conception by either King or Fallin of Aaron David and Lee Dan Chester, King and Maxine were both fully conscious of their bigamous and adulterous conduct. Charles’ “marriage” to Maxine was never annulled and declared void by a competent court and they were never prosecuted for bigamy.

It must be borne in mind that the property passing under these trusts is not the property of Charles King and never was his. He only received the income from it during his life. It was the property of Charles’ father and mother, and theirs to dispose of as they saw fit, without regard to how Charles might have seen fit to dispose of it had it been his. Therefore the question here involved is not devolution of Charles’ property, but distribution by his parents of their property by these inter vivos trusts. In determining whether or not Aaron David and Lee Dan Chester take as beneficiaries of the trusts the question is not their right to inherit but solely one of determining whether or not the trustors intended to include as beneficiaries children such as they are. Comer v. Comer, 195 Ga. 79, 85 (23 SE2d 420, 144 ALR 664).

“The construction of a contract is a question of law for the court.” Code § 20-701. “The cardinal rule of construction is to ascertain the intention of the parties. If that intention be clear, and it contravenes no rule of law, and sufficient words be used to arrive at the intention, it shall be enforced, irrespective of all technical or arbitrary rales of construction.” Code § 20-702.

Plaintiffs in error, the claimants, reason as follows: The word “children” in a trust means legitimate children. Code § 53-104 which is plain and unambiguous and therefore not subject to construction makes us the legitimate children of Charles King, if in fact we are his children. Therefore, let us prove under Code § 74-101 that we are in fact children of Charles King since, if we establish the fact of his paternity, we will take as beneficiaries under the trusts by virtue of being included within the meaning of the word “children” as used therein.

The fallacy in this argument is that there are other statutes of equal force under which these children are considered illegitimate, and if the trustors are charged at the time they executed the. trusts (1934) with knowledge of Code § 53-104, they would likewise be charged with knowledge of laws conflicting therewith. Dorsey v. Clements, 202 Ga. 820, 823-24 (44 SE2d 783, 173 ALR 509).

Prior to 1934 it had been determined by this court that a reference in a will to “children” did not include illegitimate children unless it was manifest from the context that the word was employed in a broader sense. Hicks v. Smith, 94 Ga. 809 (3) (22 SE 153). Which children were illegitimate? Code § 74-201 provided that: “An illegitimate child, or bastard, is a child bom out of wedlock, and whose parents do not subsequently intermarry, or a child the issue of adulterous intercourse of the wife during wedlock, or a child who is not legitimate within the meaning of section 74-101.” Code § 74-101 provided that: “All children born in wedlock, or within the usual period of gestation thereafter, ap legitimate. The legitimacy of a child thus bom may be disputed. Where possibility of access exists, except in cases of divorce from bed and board, the strong presumption is in favor of legitimacy, and the proof should be clear to establish the contrary. If pregnancy existed at the time of the marriage, and a divorce is sought and obtained on that ground, the child, though born in wedlock, is not legitimate. The marriage of the mother and reputed father of an illegitimate child, and the recognition of such child as his, shall render the child legitima?^ and in such case the child shall immediately take the surname of his father.” Code § 53-104 provided that: “Marriages of persons unable to contract, or unwilling to contract, or fraudulently induced to contract, shall be void. The issue of such marriages, before they are annulled and declared void by a competent court, shall be legitimate . . .” ■ Code § 26-5603 contained a provision similar to the one in Code § 53-104.

Thus in 1934, Code § 74-201 stated that children who were “the issue of adulterous intercourse of the wife during wedlock” were illegitimate, and Code § 53-104 stated that “the issue of . . . marriages [of persons unable to contract] before . . . [the marriages] are annulled and declared void by a competent court, shall be legitimate.” (Emphasis ours.) Code § 53-102 stated that a person who was a party to a “previous marriage undissolved” was a person unable to contract marriage.

The decisions of this court as of 1934 would have shed light upon the question of whether or not persons such as the claimants would take under these trusts. In the case of Hicks v. Smith, 94 Ga. 809 (3), supra, the court had held that a child bom outside of lawful wedlock who was legitimated by his father pursuant to Code § 74-103 became thereby only so far legitimate as to inherit from his father, being still as to his great-grandfather a bastard, and therefore not taking under his great-grandfather’s will which used the word “children” without any qualification. In Perkins v. Levy, 158 Ga. 896 (124 SE 799), the court had held that a marriage of a person unable to contract marriage by virtue of being a party to a previous marriage undissolved was void, but that under Code § 53-104 the issue of the “marriage” were legitimate and would inherit shares of their intestate father’s estate.

Because in 1934 the trustors used in their trusts the word “children” to describe intended beneficiaries, must we in 1962 charge them with knowledge that should children be born under the circumstances in which the children in this present case were born, and should those children be permitted to prove under Code § 74-101 the paternity of the trustors’ son, that without question those children would by virtue of the “cleansing effect” of Code § 53-104 be so far legitimate that they would take in equal shares with children unquestionably born to their son during lawful wedlock? The answer is “no.”

First, though statutes conferring legitimacy upon children who would have been bastards at the common law because not born after lawful wedlock are remedial in nature, being intended to prevent the sins of the parents from being visited upon their innocent offspring, leaving the punishment of the parents to the criminal law, the courts of this State have viewed such statutes with circumspection, giving them strict construction, because they disrupt the traditional, settled rules of property. See Beall v. Beall, 8 Ga. 210, 212 (18); Hicks v. Smith, 94 Ga. 809, 817-18, supra. Thus, this court had prior to 1934 in the Hicks case, supra, refused to allow a child legitimated by his father pursuant to Code § 74-103 to take under the will of his great-grandfather. Might not the trustors have supposed that the same strict construction would be given to Code § 53-104? At the time the trusts were executed no decision of this court had ever applied § 53-104 in a case wherein the question was the intention of the maker of an instrument when he used the word “children” to designate recipients of his bounty. The question of the applicability of that section in such a case is one of first instance in the present case.

Second, if the claimants are in fact the children of Charles King, are they not within the meaning of Code § 74-201 “issue of adulterous intercourse of the wife during wedlock,” they having been conceived and born to their mother, Maxine, during her lawful marriage to Leonard Fallin, and therefore are they not illegitimate children of King? Or are they, if children of King, as they insist they are, children of his void marriage to Maxine and therefore under Code § 53-104 his legitimate children? Should they be referred to as children of Maxine’s adulterous intercourse with King during her lawful wedlock with Fallin, and hence King’s illegitimate children under § 74-201, or as children of Maxine’s void marriage to King, and therefore King’s legitimate children under § 53-104?

Whatever may have been the legislative intent as to the interrelationship of these two statutes, the General Assembly has not expressed that intent, for each statute is absolute and unqualified in its terms and neither makes reference to the other.

If Aaron David and Lee Dan Chester are the children of Charles Hilary King, it is not possible to determine from § 53-104 and § 74-201 whether the General Assembly intended them to be his legitimate or his illegitimate children. Therefore, when in 1934 the trustors executed these trusts, they must be charged with knowledge that the word “children” as used in their trusts would not per se include illegitimate children (Hicks v. Smith, 94 Ga. 809 (3), supra), but that Code § 53-104 and Code § 74-201, which sections had not been construed by this court with relation to each other, were unclear as to whether children bom under such circumstances as the children in the present case would be considered as legitimate or illegitimate. Under these circumstances they might reasonably be expected to make their intentions as to inclusion or exclusion known by the words they employed and the dispositive scheme which their instruments evidence. This they did.

The plain language of the trusts evidences the intent of the trustors to include as beneficiaries only children bom to their son Charles in lawful wedlock, for they said that the income from the trusts should go to Charles for life and upon his death to his “child” or “children,” and if no surviving child or children to his “widow.” Clearly the words used and the dispositive scheme manifested by the instruments, that is, the disposition to their son’s children and if no surviving children to his widow, show that the trustors intended as beneficiaries children born of a lawful wife, a mother who if married to Charles at his death would be his widow. Maxine, the mother of these children, was not his widow and could never have been, for her purported marriage to him was void. Since Maxine would never qualify to take as Charles’ widow, she never having been his lawful wife, these children, if children of her relationship with Charles, were not of lawful marriage and therefore would not take under the trusts.

In the cases of Perkins v. Levy, 158 Ga. 896, supra, and Griffin v. Booth, 176 Ga. 1 (167 SE 294), it was the husband who was the party to the previous undissolved marriage while here it is the wife, and Code § 74-201 refers only to adulterous intercourse of the wife during wedlock. The rulings in those cases therefore are not in conflict with the mandate of § 74-201 of the Code. The case of Eubanks v. Banks, 34 Ga. 407, was decided under the common law of North Carolina, the marriage not being bigamous because of the defense of over 7 years absence and being merely voidable rather than void.

Plaintiffs in error complain that the trial court in its judgment made the finding that they “are the legitimate children of Leonard Edward Fallin,” and that this finding would be res judicata as to their being children of Fallin and would prevent them from inheriting from King or taking under any will he left.

This court agrees with the judgment of the superior court finding that Aaron David and Lee Dan Chester are not the children or descendants of Charles Hilary King within the meaning of the trusts, for, even if they be the children of King, which question we have not decided, they are not such children as the trustors intended to take as beneficiaries. Thus, the finding of the trial court that they are the legitimate children of Leonard Fallin was not necessary to a determination of the question of whether they are children within the meaning of the trust instruments. Upon the return of this case to the trial court, the trial court is directed to strike from its judgment the finding that Aaron David Fallin and Lee Dan Chester Fallin, sometimes referred to as Aaron King and Lee Dan Chester King, “are the legitimate children of Leonard Edward Fallin.”

Plaintiffs in error having obtained a substantial modification of the judgment against them, the costs of bringing the case to this court are taxed against the defendants in error. Code Ann. § 6-1703; Hartley v. Hartley, 212 Ga. 62 (90 SE2d 555); Dependable Insurance Co. v. Gibbs, 218 Ga. 305, 316 (127 SE2d 454).

Judgment affirmed with direction. The costs of bringing the case to this court are taxed against the defendants in error.

All the Justices concur, except Duckioorth, C. J., who dissents, and Quillian, J., who concurs specially.