holding that "the child-custody statute[, § 30-3-1, Ala. Code 1975,] does not authorize a court in a divorce action to require a noncustodial parent to pay educational support for children over the age of 19"
How later courts described this case
- holding that "the child-custody statute[, § 30-3-1, Ala. Code 1975,] does not authorize a court in a divorce action to require a noncustodial parent to pay educational support for children over the age of 19"
- "Regardless of whether the common law might have recognized an obligation to support disabled children past their majority, an issue not before us, it certainly never contemplated granting a divorce court the power to require payment for postminority educational expenses."
- “ ‘ “[T]o declare what the law is, or has been, is a judicial power; to declare what the law shall be, is legislative Sanders v. Cabaniss, 43 Ala. 173, 180 (1869) (quoting Thomas M. Cooley, Constitutional Limitations 91-95 (1868)).”
- a canon of statutory construction is that courts cannot supply what a statute omits
Written by the judges who cited it.
The opinion
BOLIN, Justice
(concurring specially).
I concur with Justice Stuart’s special writing, both as to my identical initial reaction to this Court’s decision in Ex parte Bayliss, 550 So.2d 986 (Ala.1989), described therein when Bayliss was released, as well as this being the time to “admit[ ] prior mistakes and correct[ ] them.” Jackson v. City of Florence, 294 Ala. 592, 598 , 320 So.2d 68, 73 (1975).