Sharon and Eric MacNeil were married in October 1994. Several months into their marriage, Eric was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. The couple decided to bank Eric’s sperm. Eric died intestate in May 1996 at the age of 24. In June 2007, 11 years after Eric’s death, Sharon underwent in vitro fertilization using the stored sperm. She gave birth to twins in February 2008.
In October 2009, Sharon filed applications for child’s survivors’ benefits for her twins with the Social Security Administration (SSA). The SSA denied these applications, and subsequent administrative appeals by Sharon proved unsuccessful. The only issue was whether the twins qualified as “children” under the Social Security Act. Although the twins were biologically Eric’s children, they were not entitled to inherit under New York intestacy law because they were conceived after Eric’s death.
Sharon challenged the denial of benefits in the US District Court for the Northern District of New York in November 2014. The district court affirmed the SSA’s denial of benefits, and Sharon appealed to the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit.
DEBRA ANN LIVINGSTON, CIRCUIT JUDGE The Social Security Act affords “a monthly benefit for designated surviving family members of a deceased insured wage earner,” including children of the deceased. Astrue v. Capato ex rel. B.N.C., 566 U.S. 541, 132 S. Ct. 2021, 2027 (2012). In a definitional section, the Social Security Act provides that “[i]n determining whether an applicant is the child of a fully insured individual for purposes of the subchapter governing survivors’ benefits, the Commissioner of Social Security shall apply such law as would be applied in determining the devolution of intestate personal property by the courts of the State in which the decedent was domiciled at the time of his death.” 42 U.S.C. § 416(h)(2)(A). Thus, an applicant for child’s survivors’ benefits may qualify if the applicant “could inherit the insured’s personal property as his or her natural child under State inheritance laws.” 20 C.F.R. § 404.355(a)(1).
The parties’ arguments on appeal center on two sections of New York’s EPTL. Section 4–1.1 provides the general rules for distribution of property “not disposed of by will” via intestacy. The agency argues that Section 4–1.1(c), which specifically provides for distribution of an intestate’s property to children conceived before the decedent’s death who are born thereafter, by implication excludes those children conceived after the decedent’s death. MacNeil argues, in contrast, that her twins are entitled to inherit as “non-marital children” under Section 4–1.2 because Eric’s biological paternity has been clearly established by genetic testing.
“The starting point of statutory interpretation is, of course, plain meaning.” People v. Owusu, 712 N.E.2d 1228 (1999). Section 4–1.1’s first subsection delineates the hierarchy for distributing the estate to the class of individuals “surviv[ing]” the decedent. EPTL § 4–1.1(a)(1). Survive, when used as a transitive verb, means “[t]o live longer than; [or] outlive.” American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language 1743 (4th ed. 2000). More specifically, Black’s Law Dictionary defines “surviving” as “[r]emaining alive; living beyond the happening of an event so as to entitle one to a distribution of property or income.”
Black’s Law Dictionary 1675 (10th ed. 2010). That language necessarily limits the class of distributees because the only individuals who could “live longer than”
the decedent or “remain alive” after his death are those already alive at the time of the decedent’s passing.
Read in this context, Section 4–1.1(c)’s import is clear. That subsection provides that distributees “conceived before [the decedent’s] death but born alive thereafter take as if they were born in his or her lifetime.” The treatment of other potential distributees born after the death of the decedent is determined by omission: children who did not “survive” the decedent, or are not otherwise deemed by statute to survive the decedent, do not inherit in intestacy.
Our view of the proper interpretation also coheres with the background rules underlying the EPTL. It is a very long-standing rule of New York law that an estate’s distributees are properly determined as of the time of the decedent’s death. This background rule, which fixes interests in an estate as of the time of the decedent’s death, allows estates to determine their distributees and then close, so serving the state’s “proper objective” of the “efficien[t]” and “orderly settlement of estates.” See Trimble v. Gordon, 430 U.S. 762, 770–71, 97 S. Ct. 1459 (1977).
MacNeil’s interpretation—whereby posthumously conceived children may inherit by intestacy no matter how long after their father’s death they were born—
runs, on the other hand, directly counter to this general rule. If, as MacNeil suggests, a child conceived decades after the genetic father’s death may inherit, an estate might forever remain open or subject to redistribution.
In Capato, the Supreme Court observed that the Social Security Act was designed specifically to “provide dependent members of a wage earner’s family with protection against the hardship occasioned by the loss of the insured’s earnings”—a specific hardship to which those conceived after the death of the wage earner, and thus never reliant on his support, are not subject. 132 S. Ct. at 2032.
Here, we conclude that New York’s intestacy law, as it existed in 2013 at the time of the agency’s final determination, did not permit children conceived posthumously to inherit via intestacy. For the foregoing reasons, we AFFIRM the judgment of the district court.
CRITICAL THINKING:
What was the basis for the court’s determination that the twins were not Eric’s heirs and thus could not inherit from him pursuant to applicable New York law? Is this the correct decision in this case given that other states may have decided this case differently on the basis of their laws? Should there be a national standard given these differences?
ETHICAL DECISION MAKING:
The law has been slow to adapt to scientific and technological breakthroughs. How should courts deal with questions presented by scientific and technological developments that are far ahead of legal developments?