Lack Of Jurisdiction Keeps Cemetery Case In Court

Olivia Covington  for www.theindianalawyer.com

A woman’s fight to bury her mother in a burial site that she had purchased but that was mistakenly resold will continue after the Indiana Court of Appeals found that a small claims court did not have jurisdiction to grant her injunctive relief.

In 1982, Kathy Salyer purchased five contiguous gravesites in Washington Regular Baptist Church Cemetery. Her father, and first and second husbands were buried in three of the sites, and Salyer intended to bury her mother in the northern-most gravesite and herself between her two husbands.

However, Salyer later discovered that a person named Lowell Johnson had been buried in the site intended for her mother. The cemetery admitted that it had inadvertently sold the site for the burial of Johnson after Salyer had already purchased it, but because Johnson’s family objected to his relocation, the cemetery took no action.

Salyer took the issue to small claims court, alleging theft and arguing that she was entitled to treble damages, attorney fees and court costs. She also demanded that Johnson’s body be moved. Johnson’s daughter, Kristy Sams, was an intervening third party. At the bench trial, Salyer testified that her mother had died, so she had her body cremated and buried in the same gravesite as her father.

In its May 2016 order, the court found that the best way to correct the problem was to compensate Salyer with a burial site south of her burial site, to refund her $75 for the purchase of the northern lot and to reimburse her for $94 in court costs. However, the court also found that because Salyer had already cremated her mother and buried her with her father, specific performance was not warranted.

The Ripley Superior Court denied Salyer’s motion to correct error, so she appealed, arguing that because the cemetery wrongfully buried Johnson in her gravesite, it must relocate him. She pointed specifically to Indiana Code 23-14-59-2, which holds, in part, that when a wrongful burial occurs, “the cemetery owner shall: at the expense of the cemetery owner, correct the wrongful burial … as soon as practical after becoming aware of the error.”

Although the Indiana Court of Appeals agreed Wednesday that a court may order a cemetery to perform its duty under that statute, it also held that under the preceding statute, which finds that cemetery owners are not liable in any action for a burial in the wrong lot, the trial court did err in holding the cemetery liable for damages in Salyer’s case.

Further, the appellate court wrote that I.C. 23-14-59-2 constitutes an order to specific performance or injunctive relief, and that the decision to give Salyer another burial site also constitutes an order for injunctive relief. However, small claims courts do not have jurisdiction to enter orders to specific performance or injunctive relief under Indiana statute.

Thus, the order was reversed and the case remanded for consideration of transfer to the Ripley Superior Court’s plenary docket.

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Man Must Continue To Pay Child Support For Son He Claimed Was His, Court Holds

Olivia Covington for www.theindianalawyer.com

A divided Court of Appeals panel has affirmed an order requiring a non-biological father to pay child support for his wife’s child, finding that because the man supported the child throughout his life, he is legally estopped from challenging the child support order.

Shortly after his marriage to Ronnie Sheetz in 2002, Benjamin Sheetz was sent to prison. While he was incarcerated, Ronnie Sheetz became pregnant by another man. Together the couple agreed to tell people that she had become pregnant during a conjugal visit, that she would not tell the biological father about the child and that they would raise the baby together as their own.

When the baby was born, Benjamin Sheetz signed the birth certificate as the father and told his wife not to contact the biological father, seek support from him or institute paternity proceedings. When Ronnie Sheetz filed for divorce in May 2014, she claimed that her first child and her other two children with her husband were all children of the marriage. Benjamin Sheetz was ordered to pay child support for all three, and he did not object.

However, Ronnie Sheetz eventually told her first child that Benjamin Sheetz was not his biological father. The Adams Circuit Court subsequently entered findings that concluded that Benjamin Sheetz was “estopped from denying his obligations to (the child)” because “(t)o hold otherwise would be unjust” and “an injustice to a young man who was led to believe that (Benjamin was) his father when he is not.”

Benjamin Sheetz appealed, arguing that he should not have to pay child support for his ex-wife’s first child because he is not his biological father. Indiana Court of Appeals Chief Judge Nancy Vaidik did not disagree with that fact, but wrote in a Wednesday opinion that there was more to the story.

Specifically, Vaidik pointed to the fact that Benjamin Sheetz had agreed to raise the child as his own and had done so for 12 years, and had went so far as to prevent his ex-wife from instituting paternity proceedings.

“Under these facts, Husband is estopped from rebutting the presumption that he is G.B.S.’s biological father,” Vaidik wrote for the majority.

The decision is based on the doctrine of equitable estoppel, which holds that a party may be precluded by his own actions from asserting a right he would otherwise be able to claim, Vaidik wrote. The doctrine can be invoked when one party “knowingly misleads or induces another party to believe and act upon his conduct in good faith without knowledge of the facts.”

In the instant case, Vaidik wrote that Benjamin Sheetz induced his ex-wife to believe that he would raise and support G.B.S. as his own child, leading to the passage of her opportunity to file a paternity action against the child’s biological father.

Further, the chief judge wrote that public policy also supported equitable estoppel in the Sheetzes’ situation because if it did not, the child would essentially be left without a father.

However, Judge Edward Najam dissented, writing in a separate opinion that Indiana does not recognize equitable estoppel, adoption by estoppel or in loco parentis as grounds for a child support order because “a child of the marriage” refers only to natural and adoptive parents. Additionally, Najam wrote that Ronnie Sheetz had not stated a claim for equitable relief because she testified that she knows the name of the child’s biological father and, thus, could establish paternity.