Deadbeat Disinheritance in Georgia and Intestate Adults

 Theresa Louise Davis (J.D. candidate, University of Georgia School of Law) has published her note entitled Not Just For Kids: Why Georgia’s Statutory Disinheritance of Deadbeat Parents Should Extend to Intestate Adults, 43 Ga. L. Rev. 867 (2009). 

Below is an excerpt from the introduction of the note:

First, this Note establishes a national framework in which to assess the current Georgia intestacy provision regarding abandoning parents. Only two other states with abandonment provisions limit those statutes to intestate minors. The North Carolina Court of Appeals has even expressly construed the word “child” in its state abandonment provision to include both minors and adults who die intestate. It is within this framework that the Georgia statute stands out as unnecessarily restrictive and contrary to the weight of authority across the United States. This Note highlights the 2007 legislative amendment’s failure to ameliorate problems resulting from situations like the one in Blackstone.

As a solution, this Note proposes a legislative amendment extending the provision to adults. This solution is sensible in light of both public policy and the primary purposes of intestacy law. As a matter of public policy, the proposed amendment comports with the legislature’s intent to deter parents from abandoning their children, or perhaps even to establish conduct-based rules of inheritance. This Note addresses whether, in light of public policy concerns, the statute is even worth amending. Is a potentially small number of affected Georgians or cases that reach litigation a reason to amend the statute? The answer is yes. Even a small number of affected intestate decedents necessitates a change, because the mere existence of intestacy laws proves that there is a strong public policy against punishing persons who die without wills. To ignore intestate decedents affected by this statute would in essence punish them for not having executed wills.

Intestacy law itself also supports the proposed amendment. History and theory support the proposition that the primary goal of intestacy laws is to effectuate the decedent’s intent-to essentially draft a will for the decedent. Difficulties necessarily arise in constructing a decedent’s intent where there is no will to give guidance, but the unique case of abandoned children does not present such difficulties, because abandoned children most likely would not want their abandoning parents to inherit. This Note will counter the sparse theoretical work that argues that children would want their parents to inherit from their estate despite having been abandoned by them. General rules of construction and common sense indicate that most, if not all, abandoned children-regardless of their age at death-would not want an abandoning parent to inherit from their estates.

Thus, Georgia’s 2007 amendment, well-intended as it may be, frustrates its very purpose by limiting its application to a potentially narrow class of abandoned children who die intestate before the age of eighteen. Individuals who were abandoned as children do not have vastly different desires about their abandoning parents’ ability to inherit from them merely because of the age at which they die. On the contrary, both public policy and presumptions of decedents’ intent require equal treatment of minors and adults who were abandoned as children, and Georgia’s intestate succession statute should be amended accordingly.