holding that § 4‐1.2 bars children born out of wedlock, but not those born in wedlock, from exercising inheritance rights if they lack proper evidence of paternity
How later courts described this case
- holding that § 4‐1.2 bars children born out of wedlock, but not those born in wedlock, from exercising inheritance rights if they lack proper evidence of paternity
- stating that the Court has 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”
- upholding statute that allowed illegitimate children to inherit unconditionally from their mothers, but allowed inheritance from an intestate father only where a court order declaring paternity was entered during the father’s lifetime, finding the evidentiary requirement substantially related to the state’s interest in avoiding the difficulties associated with proof of paternity and exposure to spurious claims
- noting that the purpose of a statutory evidentiary standard for proof of paternity allowing illegitimate children to inherit from their intestate fathers is to grant illegitimates insofar as practicable rights of inheritance on a par with those of legitimate children
Written by the judges who cited it.
Distinguished
Distinguished by Daniels ex rel. Daniels v. Sullivan, 979 F.2d 1516 (1992)
This court distinguished Lalli based on the court’s conclusion that the Alabama law, as applied to the facts in Handley, effectively fore
The opinion
Mr. Justice Blackmun,
concurring in the judgment.
I agree with the result the Court has reached and concur in its judgment. I also agree with much that has been said in the plurality opinion. My point of departure, of course, is at the plurality’s valiant struggle to distinguish, rather than overrule, Trimble v. Gordon, 430 U. S. 762 (1977), decided just the Term before last, and involving a small probate estate (an automobile worth approximately $2,500) and a sad and appealing fact situation. Four Members of the Court, like the Supreme Court of Illinois, found the case “constitutionally indistinguishable from Labine v. Vincent, 401 U. S. 532 (1971),” and were in dissent. Id., at 776, 777.
It seems to me that the Court today gratifyingly reverts to the principles set forth in Labine v. Vincent . What Mr. Justice Black said for the Court in Labine applies with equal *277 force to the present case and, as four of us thought, to the Illinois situation with which Trimble was concerned.
I would overrule Trimble , but the Court refrains from doing so on the theory that the result in Trimble is justified because of the peculiarities of the Illinois Probate Act there under consideration. This, of course, is an explanation, but, for me, it is an unconvincing one. I therefore must regard Timble as a derelict, explainable only because of the overtones of its appealing facts, and offering little precedent for constitutional analysis of State intestate succession laws. If Trimble is not a derelict, the corresponding statutes of other States will be of questionable validity until this Court passes on them, one by one, as being on the Trimble side of the line or the Labine-Lalli side.