Couple's Son Outgrows Legal Definition of 'Child'

The Oregon Court of Appeal this week stuck with a two-decades-old interpretation that a child as defined by the workers' compensation survivor death-benefits law is someone under 18. The ruling grew out of a live-in wife's claim for death benefits and not her son's. She was the boy's father were never married, but they cohabitated for years and produced a child. That child, however, is 24 and the appellate court ruled in Sworden v. Alcoa-Reynolds Metals Co., A125705, 02/07/2007, that makes his mother ineligible for the death benefit. The decedent, Willard Sworden, developed bladder cancer...