RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – When young Paulo Roberto Menezes filed a paternity investigation on April 21st, 1956, in the city of Alegrete (RS), he surely had no idea that the case would only be finally judged 63 years later.
His intention was to be acknowledged as the son of José Cândido de Almeida — who passed away without leaving recognized descendants — and thus to be entitled to the deceased’s inheritance.
In the action, Menezes recounts that he and a brother, whom Almeida nicknamed “negrinhos” (pickaninnies), were the offspring of a cohabitation relationship of the deceased.
The story of the case ended 23,050 days after Menezes filed the initial petition, more precisely on May 31st, 2019, when Justice Rosa Weber, of the STF (Federal Supreme Court), rejected the latest appeals from Almeida’s family.
Justice Weber upheld the decision of the lower court judge, who had acknowledged Menezes as Almeida’s son in January 1968, almost twelve years after the initial request.
The decades-long delay is highly unusual, but pending cases in Brazilian state courts averaged seven years in the execution phase in 2017, according to data from the CNJ (National Council of Justice).
In the case beginning in Alegrete, Almeida’s family members, Cristóvão Manoel Muñoz, Beatriz Muñoz Braz, and Gil Braz, began a sequence of appeals that ultimately led to the STF, where the issue was left in the hands of at least nine justices.
The first of the appeals, filed in the TJ-RS (Appellate Court of Rio Grande do Sul), was denied in 1969. Almeida’s relatives filed at least another ten, but were ultimately unsuccessful.
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