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Man Who Participated in Paternity Proceeding Did Not Thereby Acknowledge Child—C.A.
By a MetNews Staff Writer
A man’s participation in paternity proceedings, culminating in his agreement to pay child support, was not a sufficient acknowledgement of being the child’s father as to permit him to inherit from his daughter, Div. One of the First District Court of Appeal held Friday.
At issue was whether Probate Code §6452(a)(2) barred Jorge Ovalles from inheriting from a child he never saw. That section bars inheritance where “[t]he parent did not acknowledge the child.”
Ovalles’s daughter was born in 2014, incurring severe injuries during delivery.
A lawsuit on behalf of the child was settled for $921,383.93 with the proceeds funding the Olivia Morales Special Needs Trust. Westamerica Bank was the trustee.
Upon the death of the child in 2020, Westamerica sought instructions from the Solano Superior Court as to distribution of the roughly $1 million in assets. Judge Alesia Jones ruled that §6452(a)(2) does not apply, reasoning that Ovalles acknowledged the child when he “participated in the Kern County proceedings, attending mediation and reaching an agreement regarding legal and physical custody, and paid his child support.”
Presiding Justice James M. Humes said in Friday’s unpublished opinion, reversing Jones’s order:
“A mediation is, by its nature, an agreed-upon compromise. We can conceive of different reasons why Ovalles may have mediated this paternity dispute as he did, including, perhaps, a desire to avoid a formal declaration of paternity. Such mediation was certainly not an unequivocal confession that he was Olivia’s father. Under these circumstances, where Ovalles has failed to acknowledge paternity for purposes of section 6452, he cannot inherit based upon the parent-child relationship.”
The case is Westamerica Bank v. Morales, A165492.
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