Home | Databases | WorldLII | Search | Feedback Reports of the Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands

  Download original PDF

Moses v Moses [1966] TTLawRp 18; 3 TTR 187 (1 June 1966)

3 TTR 187

JOSEPH MOSES,
Plaintiff

v.

JOHNY MOSES,
Defendant

Civil Action No. 258
Trial Division of the High Court
Ponape District

June 1, 1966

Action to determine ownership of land in Uh Municipality, in which illegitimate son of deceased landowner under German land title claims land by inheritance. The Trial Division of the High Court, Chief Justice E. P. Furber, held that under Ponape custom, illegitimate child is considered neither child nor heir of father, but that plaintiff should have benefit of short-term plantings on land.

1. Ponape Custom – Illegitimate Child

Under Ponape custom, illegitimate child of man is not to be considered his child or issue, within meaning of inheritance laws, unless child is either adopted or legitimatized by being publically acknowledged and accepted into family by man as his child.

2. Ponape Land Law – Crops

As to long term crops which party wrongfully claiming possession has planted, it is considered that past harvesting has sufficiently compensated him.

3. Ponape Land Law – Crops

Party wrongfully claiming possession of land in Ponape who makes plantings should be allowed to obtain benefit of any short-term crops which he has planted.

FURBER, Chief Justice

FINDINGS OF FACT

1. The plaintiff Joseph Moses has not sustained the burden of proving that he is either the legitimate son of Ioanes Moses or was publicly acknowledged by Ioanes as the latter's son.

2. The plaintiff Joseph Moses has worked and made plantings on the land in question with the defendant Johny Moses' consent since 1959.

3. It is doubtful if there was ever any true meeting of the minds as to the parties' purported agreement for the division of the land in question, but in view of their dispute as to the terms of such purported agreement, neither party now desires to carry out even his understanding of those terms.

OPINION

[1] This action involves the ownership of a piece of land in Uh Municipality on Ponape Island which was held under the standard form of German title document on Ponape beginning in 1912. Both parties claim as the heir of Ioanes Moses. The action is largely controlled by the findings of fact made above, there being no question but what the defendant Johny Moses is the true older brother of Ioanes and therefore entitled to inherit under the inheritance laws of Ponape if Ioanes left no issue. From long established practice on Ponape, the court holds that an illegitimate child of a man is not to be considered as his child or issue, within the meaning of the inheritance laws there, unless such a child is either adopted or legitimatized by being publicly acknowledged and accepted into his family by the man as his child. There has been no claim in this action that the plaintiff Joseph Moses had been adopted by Ioanes.