The State Parentage Act

In 1983, the state legislature had enacted the New Jersey Parentage Act, which established the principle that “regardless of the marital status of the parents, all children and parents have equal rights

with respect to each other.” It was also intended to provide a procedure to establish parentage in disputed cases. Specifically, the statute states: A man is presumed to be the biological father of a child if...[h]e and the child’s biological
mother are or have been married to each other and the child is born during the marriage, or within 300 days after the marriage is terminated....The state supreme court noted that, as indicated by the legislative history, “[t]hese presumptions are intended to facilitate the flow of benefits from the father to the child.”

The presumption of legitimacy is one of the strongest rebuttable presumptions known to the law.
Most courts require that it be honored unless overcome by what the New Jersey court called “the strongest
sort of evidence.”

With that established, the court ruled: We agree with the trial court that the Parentage Act essentially forecloses a thirdparty attack on [Cookie]’s parentage. The Act broadly accepts proof of paternity as “adjudicated under prior law,” as well as in a host of other settings.... Nor are we persuaded that the doctrine of probable intent requires a contrary conclusion or further proceedings.

Probable intent is a concept that courts apply to trusts or contracts whose wording is unclear. But the state supreme court ruled that this wasn’t so in the Johnson case.

The Ryans argued, Cookie’s exclusion from the 1963 trust indicated that Seward Sr. did not intend her to be a beneficiary of the 1961 trust. But the state supreme court concluded that the inference of contradiction between the 1961 and
1963 trusts formed an insufficient basis on which to question Seward Sr.’s intent, which was unambiguously stated in the 1961 trust. Finally, the court had to consider the dispute in the framework of fundamental fairness (a big deal in family money cases). On these matters, it wrote: Although the social opprobrium once associated with being a child born out of
wedlock has dissipated, the presumption in favor of legitimacy remains strong. Courts continue to rely on that presumption to promote our “oft-expressed policy of supporting the integrity of the family unit and protecting the best interests of the child... child’s right to family identification.” Similarly, the doctrine furthers the public policy of favoring the establishment of legal parenthood with all of its accompanying responsibilities.

By design, the presumption of paternity in the New Jersey Parentage Act was intended to prevent “rumor, innuendo and whispers of illegitimacy from creeping into the serious process of determining paternity.”

In essence, the Ryans’ claim required the court to balance the re-examination of Cookie’s legitimacy against their right to question that legitimacy and thereby increase their economic gain. With what sounds like some contempt, the court wrote: ...the purported economic right to become eligible for an unspecified share of trust proceeds occupies a lower place in the hierarchy of rights as compared to a putative father’s right to the parent-child relationship. ... cannot be Seward Jr.’s daughter for only some purposes. By operation of law, the adjudication of Seward Jr.’s paternity cements status as an eligible beneficiary under the 1961 trust absent clear language to the contrary within the trust itself. Cookie’s lawyers said that the ruling made a strong statement about the integrity of family. “Once a husband and a wife acknowledge the parentage of a child or it is determined in court, other people cannot intrude and raise questions about a paternity,” said attorney Robert Del Tufo.

As we mentioned before, this case was only one of many involving the Johnson family. Seward Sr. had made some problems himself, in terms of family integrity, by marrying a Polish-born woman half his age who’d worked as a cook and maid on his $30 million Princeton estate. Thirty-nine days before his death, Seward Sr. amended his will, leaving
most of his estate to his new wife. His children, including Seward Jr., contested this will. That trial started the tabloid interest in the family’s affairs. The Polish wife considered Seward Sr.’s children as greedy wastrels who squandered millions in inheritance. Stories of drug abuse, incest and suicide attempts filtered out from depositions and testimony. The heirs called family servants to testify supported by taped recordings of the Polish wife’s tirades. In her heavily-accented English, she sounded like a cartoonish caricature of a wicked stepmother (even though she was younger than most of Seward
Sr.’s children). When all was said and done, the case was settled one day before it was considered by the jury. Seward’s new wife walked away with $350 million; the children split more than $40 million.

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