Tyler Strang v. malay/hernandez

IN THE SUPREME COURT OF THE STATE OF ARIZONA TYLER STRANG, Petitioner, v. CAITLIN MALAY AND CHRISTIAN HERNANDEZ, Respondents. No. CV-25-0233-SA Filed September 14, 2026 Special Action from the Superior Court in Maricopa County The Honorable Quintin Cushner, Judge No. FC2024-090462 JURISDICTION ACCEPTED, RELIEF GRANTED COUNSEL: Keith Berkshire, Alexandra Sandlin (argued), Elizabeth Nañez, Alicia Derr, Berkshire Law Office, PLLC, Tempe, Attorneys for Tyler Strang Stanley David Murray (argued), Attorney at Law, Scottsdale, Attorney for Caitlin Malay Alison C. Briggs (argued), Arizona Family Lawyers LLC, Mesa, Attorney for Christian Hernandez JUSTICE CRUZ authored the Opinion of the Court, in which CHIEF JUSTICE TIMMER and JUSTICES BOLICK and MONTGOMERY joined. VICE CHIEF JUSTICE LOPEZ and JUSTICES BEENE and KING dissented.  STRANG V. MALAY/HERNANDEZ Opinion of the Court JUSTICE CRUZ, Opinion of the Court: ¶1 We are asked to determine whether the superior court correctly concluded that biological father Tyler Strang’s efforts to establish paternity were barred by A.R.S. § 25-812(E), thereby preventing the superior court from determining whether his alleged genetic-testing presumption invoked the resolution of competing presumptions prescribed by A.R.S. § 25-814(C). Resolving an apparent conflict among decisions of the court of appeals, we hold that § 25-812(E) does not bar a biological father who was not a party to an acknowledgment of paternity from maintaining the independent statutory action authorized by A.R.S. § 25-803. BACKGROUND ¶2 In 2021, Tyler Strang and Christian Hernandez each had sexual relations with Caitlin Malay (“Mother”), who conceived a child. The child was born in September 2021. Mother and Hernandez thereafter executed an acknowledgment of paternity (“AOP”), which the state accepted in October 2021. At the time they signed the AOP, both Mother and Hernandez believed that Hernandez was the child’s biological father. Strang maintained that he did not know he was the child’s biological father until genetic testing established that fact in November 2023. The record does not reflect when Strang first learned of the child’s birth. ¶3 In April 2022—more than six months after the AOP was executed—Hernandez obtained genetic testing indicating that he was not the child’s biological father. Nonetheless, Hernandez assumed primary caregiving responsibilities for the child from May 2022 through June 2023 during Mother’s incarceration. In November 2023, Strang obtained genetic testing indicating that he was the child’s biological father, a month after Mother contacted Strang to notify him that Hernandez was not the biological father. A second test conducted in June 2024 confirmed that result. ¶4 In February 2024, Mother petitioned for legal decision-making and parenting time, alleging that Hernandez was not the child’s biological father. Two days later, Hernandez petitioned to establish paternity, legal decision-making, parenting time, and child support, asserting that he was the child’s “natural” father. Neither petition identified Strang as a potential father, and Strang was not made a party to 2  STRANG V. MALAY/HERNANDEZ Opinion of the Court those proceedings. On February 28, 2024, Mother and Hernandez stipulated to temporary orders providing for joint legal decision-making and a parenting plan. ¶5 In August 2024, Strang moved to intervene in the action between Mother and Hernandez to assert his own paternity claim consistent with § 25-803, and in November 2024, he petitioned to establish paternity, legal decision-making, parenting time, and child support. In December 2024, Hernandez objected to Strang’s petition and moved to dismiss, arguing that Strang’s petition was barred because Hernandez’s paternity had already been established through the AOP and could be challenged only under § 25-812, which provides for a challenge after sixty days only on the basis of fraud, duress, or material mistake of fact. ¶6 While his petition to establish paternity remained pending, Strang also moved to set aside Hernandez’s AOP. He argued that the AOP had been executed under the mistaken belief that Hernandez was the child’s biological father and that genetic testing established Strang’s biological paternity, thereby creating a presumption of paternity under § 25-814(A), which defines when a man is presumed to be the father of a child. Hernandez opposed the motion, arguing that any challenge to the AOP was untimely under § 25-812(E) and ran afoul of Arizona Rule of Family Law Procedure 85(c)’s requirement that any motion be urged within six months following entry of judgment. ¶7 Following an evidentiary hearing, the superior court denied relief. The superior court concluded that the AOP had the force and effect of a judgment and that any challenge to it was untimely under § 25-812(E) and Rule 85(c). ¶8 Strang then filed a petition for special action with this Court. Mother and Hernandez did not oppose this Court’s exercise of special action jurisdiction. We accepted jurisdiction, in part, because three court of appeals decisions—Brummond v. Lucio, 243 Ariz. 360 (App. 2017); Roger S. v. James S., 251 Ariz. 555 (App. 2021); and Johnson v. Edelstein, 252 Ariz. 230 (App. 2021)—appear to conflict on whether a biological father may challenge an AOP after the six-month period referenced in Rule 85(c)(1). ¶9 More specifically, this case requires us to determine how §§ 25-803, -812, and -814 operate together. Section 25-803 authorizes an 3  STRANG V. MALAY/HERNANDEZ Opinion of the Court action to establish paternity. Section 25-812 provides a procedure for voluntarily acknowledging paternity and for challenging that acknowledgment. Section 25-814 establishes several presumptions of paternity and directs courts to resolve competing presumptions according to “weightier considerations of policy and logic.” Because these statutes address related aspects of the same subject, we construe them together so that each retains independent effect. See Pima Cnty. ex rel. City of Tucson v. Maya Constr. Co., 158 Ariz. 151, 155 (1988) (explaining that when “statutes relate to the same subject,” we construe them “together . . . as though they constituted one law” in order to “give effect to all the statutes involved”). ¶10 We accepted special action jurisdiction to resolve this issue of statewide importance concerning the interaction among Arizona’s statutory provisions for establishing paternity. We have jurisdiction under article 6, section 5(1), (4), and (6) of the Arizona Constitution. DISCUSSION A. Arizona’s Paternity Statutes Establish a Unified Framework for Determining Legal Parentage ¶11 We review questions of statutory interpretation de novo. S. Ariz. Home Builders Ass’n v. Town of Marana, 254 Ariz. 281, 284 ¶ 16 (2023). We interpret statutes “according to the plain meaning of the words in their broader statutory context, unless the [L]egislature directs us to do otherwise.” In re Drummond, 257 Ariz. 15, 21 ¶ 19 (2024) (quoting Town of Marana, 254 Ariz. at 286 ¶ 31). We do not construe statutory provisions in isolation but instead read related statutes together, giving effect to each whenever reasonably possible. See State ex rel. Montgomery v. Harris, 237 Ariz. 98, 101 ¶ 13 (2014). Likewise, we avoid constructions that render statutory language superfluous, nullify one provision by another, or add language that the Legislature did not include. State v. Deddens, 112 Ariz. 425, 429 (1975); Stambaugh v. Killian, 242 Ariz. 508, 509 ¶ 7 (2017). And where competing constructions are reasonably available, we favor one that avoids serious constitutional questions. Hayes v. Cont’l Ins. Co., 178 Ariz. 264, 273 (1994). ¶12 Arizona’s paternity statutes provide multiple, complementary methods for establishing legal parentage. Section 25-803 authorizes specified persons, including a father or an adult alleging to be 4  STRANG V. MALAY/HERNANDEZ Opinion of the Court the child’s parent, to commence a judicial proceeding to establish paternity. § 25-803(A). Section 25-812 permits unmarried parents to voluntarily establish legal paternity by executing and filing an AOP. § 25-812(A)(1). Once properly executed and filed, that AOP has “the same force and effect as a superior court judgment.” § 25-812(D). Section 25-814 establishes several presumptions of paternity, including a presumption arising from genetic testing establishing “at least a ninety-five per cent probability of paternity.” § 25-814(A)(2). ¶13 Section 25-812 serves a distinct purpose within that statutory framework. It allows unmarried parents to voluntarily establish legal paternity without litigation, thereby promoting certainty, stability, and finality in the parent-child relationship. See Stephenson v. Nastro, 192 Ariz. 475, 480–81 ¶¶ 14–18 (App. 1998). To further those interests, the Legislature prescribed specific procedures governing rescission of, and relief from, an AOP. See § 25-812(E), (H). A parent may rescind the AOP within the earlier of sixty days after the last signature or the date of a related proceeding. § 25-812(H). After that sixty-day period expires, an AOP may be challenged only on the statutory grounds of fraud, duress, or material mistake of fact, with the burden of proof on the challenger, § 25-812(E), and the challenge is brought under Rule 85. Although § 25-812(E) refers to “[R]ule 85(c),” that subpart governs only the timing and effect of a motion made under Rule 85(b); the procedural vehicle is therefore Rule 85 as a whole, with subsection (c) prescribing the time within which the motion must be made beyond the sixty-day period. Rule 85(b) supplies the mechanism for relief from a judgment, while § 25-812(E) narrows the grounds available in this context to fraud, duress, or material mistake of fact. Nothing in today’s decision alters those statutory procedures or the legal effect afforded a properly executed AOP under § 25-812(D). ¶14 Section 25-803 serves a different function. Rather than governing voluntary AOPs, it authorizes a judicial proceeding through which specified persons may seek to establish parentage. The Legislature thus provided both an administrative mechanism for voluntarily establishing paternity and a separate judicial mechanism for adjudicating disputed claims of parentage. These statutes address different circumstances and perform different functions within the overall statutory scheme. The Legislature imposed no general deadline on a § 25-803 action; such a proceeding may be “instituted during the pregnancy of the mother or after the birth of the child,” and is time-barred only where it seeks to 5  STRANG V. MALAY/HERNANDEZ Opinion of the Court establish a support obligation after the child’s eighteenth birthday. § 25-804; see Castillo v. Lazo, 241 Ariz. 295, 298 ¶ 13 (App. 2016) (explaining that § 25-804, not § 25-812, supplies the limitations rule for a putative father’s paternity action). ¶15 Section 25-814 complements those provisions by identifying the presumptions applicable in paternity proceedings and directing courts how to resolve competing presumptions. Subsection (C) provides that “[i]f two or more presumptions apply,” the presumption that the court determines, on the facts, as controlling is “based on weightier considerations of policy and logic.” § 25-814(C). ¶16 Read together, §§ 25-803, -812, and -814 establish a unified statutory framework governing the determination of legal parentage. Section 25-812 establishes legal paternity by voluntary acknowledgment and prescribes the procedures governing rescission of, or relief from, that acknowledgment. Section 25-803 authorizes a judicial action to establish paternity. Section 25-804 sets the timing for that action, providing that paternity “[p]roceedings . . . may be instituted during the pregnancy of the mother or after the birth of the child,” and reserving a fixed eighteenth-birthday deadline only “[f]or the purposes of establishing a duty to pay support or past support.” This broad “after the birth of the child” window is a deliberate feature of the framework, and it is what preserves Strang’s ability to bring—and thus to intervene in—an action to establish paternity under § 25-803. Section 25-814 identifies the presumptions applicable in such proceedings and directs courts how to resolve competing presumptions when more than one applies. Construing these provisions together gives meaningful effect to each without permitting one statute to subsume the others. ¶17 With that statutory framework in mind, we consider whether the superior court correctly concluded that Hernandez’s AOP categorically foreclosed the independent statutory action to establish paternity that Strang asserted under § 25-803. Although Strang raised that action by intervening in the consolidated proceeding initiated by Mother and Hernandez, rather than by filing a separate case, the manner in which he asserted it does not alter its character as the independent action the Legislature authorized in § 25-803. Cf. Brummond, 243 Ariz. at 365 ¶ 20 (stating that a father’s decision to consolidate his paternity petition with another’s “does not change the nature of his petition for paternity as an 6  STRANG V. MALAY/HERNANDEZ Opinion of the Court independent action”). B. Strang’s Claim to Paternity Is Not Categorically Barred by A.R.S. § 25-812 ¶18 The parties’ dispute reduces to a single interpretive question: what is the effect of an AOP when a man who did not sign it later comes forward with a competing genetic-testing presumption? Hernandez, relying on McQuillen v. Hufford, 249 Ariz. 69, 73 ¶ 11 (App. 2020), and Gutierrez v. Fox, 242 Ariz. 259, 269 ¶ 40 (App. 2017), contends that because an AOP has “the same force and effect as a superior court judgment,” § 25-812(D), it is a “court decree establishing paternity” that “rebuts the presumption” under the final sentence of § 25-814(C), ending the inquiry. Strang counters that § 25-814(A)(4) expressly lists an AOP as one of several presumptions of paternity, so an AOP cannot simultaneously be a mere presumption and a conclusive decree that extinguishes every competing presumption listed in the same subsection. We agree with Strang. ¶19 Reading an AOP as a “court decree” that always rebuts a competing presumption cannot be reconciled with § 25-814(A)(4), which expressly identifies a signed AOP as one of the statutory presumptions of paternity—each of which “shall be rebutted by clear and convincing evidence,” § 25-814(C). If an AOP invariably operates as a conclusive decree under the final sentence of § 25-814(C), § 25-814(A)(4) would be superfluous, because the presumption it creates could never be weighed against any other. We read statutes “as a cohesive whole so that no word or provision is rendered superfluous.” State v. Serrato, 259 Ariz. 493, 497 ¶ 16 (2025) (citation modified). The final sentence of § 25-814(C) is best understood to apply to a litigated decree establishing paternity entered after adjudication—not to a voluntary AOP, which subsection (A)(4) already classifies as a presumption subject to the subsection (C) balancing. To the extent McQuillen and Gutierrez hold otherwise, we disapprove them. ¶20 The dissent notes that § 25-812(E) permits a challenge not only by “the mother” and “father” but also by “the child” and “a party to the proceeding on a [R]ule 85(c) motion,” and argues that this list of non- signatories is inconsistent with reading the subsection’s limits as running only to signatories. See infra ¶ 79. It is not. The relevant boundary is not who executed the AOP but whose parentage it fixes. Mother, father, and child are the three persons whose legal relationships the AOP establishes. 7  STRANG V. MALAY/HERNANDEZ Opinion of the Court Section 25-812(E) accordingly extends standing to challenge the AOP to each member of that fixed relationship, not to any stranger who might wish to assert a competing claim of his own. ¶21 A “party to the proceeding on a [R]ule 85(c) motion” fits the same pattern: it identifies who may participate once such a challenge is under way, not a freestanding grant of standing to initiate one. Strang is neither a signatory to the AOP nor a person whose parentage it purports to establish; he stands outside the relationship § 25-812(E) governs altogether, which is precisely why his own claim proceeds under § 25-803 rather than as a challenge to Hernandez’s AOP. ¶22 This construction also avoids a serious constitutional difficulty. A biological father’s interest in the opportunity to establish a relationship with his child is constitutionally protected, see Lehr v. Robertson, 463 U.S. 248, 258–61 (1983), and construing § 25-812(E) to extinguish a non-party father’s § 25-803 paternity action would permit that interest “to be erased without any notice or opportunity to be heard,” Brummond, 243 Ariz. at 364 ¶ 17. Where a construction avoids that concern and gives effect to every provision, we adopt it. State v. Burbey, 243 Ariz. 145, 149 ¶ 17 (2017); Hayes, 178 Ariz. at 273. That the AOP carries “the same force and effect as a superior court judgment,” § 25-812(D), does not dispel this difficulty, because the binding force of a judgment reaches only the parties to it and those in privity with them. A “person who is not a party to an action is not bound by the result,” and “the preclusive effect of a judgment is limited to parties and persons in privity with parties.” Scottsdale Mem’l Health Sys., Inc. v. Clark, 157 Ariz. 461, 466 (1988). “[A] stranger to a litigation may not be bound by a determination made therein for purposes of subsequent litigation.” Fremont Indem. Co. v. Indus. Comm’n, 144 Ariz. 339, 342 (1985). That limitation is a requirement of due process: a decision purporting to bind by its findings “a person who was not a party thereto and who had no notice or right to a hearing . . . deprives that person of property without due process of law,” and a court may not evade the requirement of notice and hearing by labelling the proceeding “in rem.” Id. at 344 (quoting Rediker v. Rediker, 221 P.2d 1, 5 (Cal. 1950)). We borrow that formulation for its due-process principle only; a father who is not a party to the AOP does not stand to lose a property interest, but rather his own liberty interest in the opportunity to establish a parental relationship. The AOP’s judgment status, and § 25-812(E)’s limits on obtaining relief from it, therefore bind only those who are a party to it; that limited effect is precisely 8  STRANG V. MALAY/HERNANDEZ Opinion of the Court why they leave a non-party father’s § 25-803 action untouched. See Taylor v. Sturgell, 553 U.S. 880, 892–93 (2008) (application of preclusion to nonparties runs against the deep-rooted historic tradition that everyone should have his own day in court). ¶23 Nor would the analysis change if a non-party father knew that the AOP had been executed and filed with the state. Notice of that kind is not the “opportunity to be heard” that due process requires. An AOP is a voluntary instrument executed by the mother and the acknowledging man, § 25-812(A); a man who did not sign it has no means to participate in or contest it, and his awareness that others executed and filed it does not make him a party to it. As we have recognized in the analogous setting of a judgment entered without joinder, “[e]ven if the owner knew of the suit, any judgment is void because having not been a party, the owner cannot be bound.” Ballard v. Laws. Title of Ariz., 27 Ariz. App. 168, 170 (1976). A non-party father’s opportunity to be heard on his own claim of paternity lies not in the acknowledgment but in the independent action the Legislature authorized in § 25-803. Because the meaning we give § 25-812(E) governs every case alike, the dissent’s emphasis on Strang’s own notice and delay does not bear on the interpretive question before us; whether a construction raises serious constitutional doubt is measured by its operation in the ordinary case of a father who had no notice and no opportunity to be heard. His knowledge of the AOP, and any delay in asserting his claim, may bear on the equitable defenses the superior court remains free to weigh on remand, including delay, laches, prejudice, and reliance. But it neither enlarges the AOP’s preclusive reach nor converts § 25-812(E)’s limits—specific to those whose parentage the AOP fixes—into a bar on a non-party’s separate statutory action. ¶24 We conclude that the superior court erred by treating Hernandez’s AOP as ending the statutory inquiry. Although the AOP established Hernandez’s legal paternity under § 25-812(D), it did not answer the separate question whether Strang could pursue the independent action authorized by § 25-803 or, if so, whether the superior court was required to resolve competing statutory claims under § 25-814(C). ¶25 Hernandez relies on § 25-814(C)’s final sentence, which provides that “[a] court decree establishing paternity of the child by another man rebuts the presumption.” We do not read that sentence in isolation. Rather, we construe it together with the remainder of subsection (C) and 9  STRANG V. MALAY/HERNANDEZ Opinion of the Court the related provisions governing paternity. See Harris, 237 Ariz. at 101 ¶ 13. Reading the subsection as Hernandez proposes would effectively prevent the superior court from ever reaching the statutorily prescribed balancing inquiry in subsection (C). We therefore decline to construe the subsection in a manner that renders the express directive in one of its subsections largely inoperative. See Serrato, 259 Ariz. at 497 ¶ 16 (We “read[] statutes as a cohesive whole so that no word or provision is rendered superfluous.”) (citation modified). ¶26 The superior court correctly recognized that Hernandez’s AOP has the same force and effect as a superior court judgment. § 25-812(D); McQuillen, 249 Ariz. at 72 ¶ 12. We likewise agree that § 25-812(E) governs efforts to rescind or obtain relief from an AOP and that Rule 85 supplies the procedure for such relief. See McQuillen, 249 Ariz. at 73 ¶¶ 14–15. Nothing in today’s decision alters those settled principles. We agree with McQuillen insofar as it recognizes the force and effect afforded an AOP under § 25-812(D) and the procedures governing efforts to obtain relief from that AOP under § 25-812(E). For the reasons already explained, we disapprove McQuillen—and Gutierrez—only insofar as they treat an AOP as foreclosing the balancing § 25-814(C) requires; we do not read them to hold that those provisions invariably foreclose the independent statutory action authorized by § 25-803. The question here is whether those principles foreclose the separate judicial action the Legislature authorized in § 25-803. ¶27 Strang commenced the judicial proceeding authorized by § 25-803(A)(2), alleging that genetic testing established he is the child’s biological father. If proven, that testing gives rise to the statutory presumption recognized in § 25-814(A)(2). Thus, this case implicates not only § 25-812, but also the Legislature’s separate provisions authorizing a paternity action and directing courts how to resolve competing statutory claims of paternity. We must construe those provisions together. See Harris, 237 Ariz. at 101 ¶ 13; Navarro, 240 Ariz. at 195 ¶ 9. ¶28 Hernandez contends that because his AOP has the force and effect of a judgment, § 25-812(E) precludes any later assertion of paternity by another man once the Rule 85 time limits have expired. We do not read the statutory scheme so broadly. Section 25-812 governs the establishment of paternity by acknowledgment and the procedures for the parties to that acknowledgement to obtain relief from it. Nothing in § 25-812(E) states that 10  STRANG V. MALAY/HERNANDEZ Opinion of the Court a properly filed AOP extinguishes the separate judicial action the Legislature expressly authorized in § 25-803. Nor will we infer such a limitation where the Legislature has not imposed one. See Stambaugh, 242 Ariz. at 509–10 ¶¶ 7, 15. Had the Legislature intended such a consequence, it could have said so. Nor does the canon that a specific statute controls over a general one aid Hernandez. Sections 25-812 and 25-803 do not conflict: § 25-812(E)’s limits operate on the parties who signed the AOP and their efforts to obtain relief from it, while § 25-803 authorizes a putative father who never signed to establish his own paternity. Because a man who signs or consents to an AOP is a party to it, § 25-812(E) supplies his exclusive avenue for relief, and nothing in today’s decision permits such a person to use § 25-803 to undo an AOP he helped create; our holding reaches only a putative father who was a stranger to the AOP and had no means to participate in it. Given full effect together, neither subordinates the other. We will not read into § 25-812(E) a limitation that the Legislature did not include. See In re M.N., 259 Ariz. 120, 141 ¶ 28 (2025) (“We ‘will not inflate, expand, stretch or extend a statute to matters not falling within its expressed provisions.’” (quoting Mussi v. Hobbs, 255 Ariz. 395, 402 ¶ 34 (2023))). ¶29 Our construction preserves the finality interests reflected in § 25-812 while recognizing the Legislature’s separate authorization of a judicial action under § 25-803. By contrast, Hernandez’s construction would substantially limit the operation of both § 25-803 and § 25-814(C), which expressly contemplates circumstances in which “two or more presumptions apply.” We decline to adopt a construction that renders those provisions largely inoperative. See Nicaise v. Sundaram, 245 Ariz. 566, 568 ¶ 11 (2019); Navarro, 240 Ariz. at 195 ¶ 9. Reading § 25-812(E) to extinguish every later judicial action would likewise prevent the superior court from ever performing the analysis the Legislature expressly prescribed in the opening sentence of § 25-814(C), with the sometimes-perverse result that the rights of a claimed parent would automatically nullify the rights of an actual parent. ¶30 Our interpretation is consistent with Stephenson, which recognized the Legislature’s strong interest in promoting stability and finality in parentage determinations. 192 Ariz. at 480–81 ¶¶ 16–17. Today’s construction preserves those interests while also giving effect to the Legislature’s independent authorization of a judicial paternity action under § 25-803 and the reconciliation procedure prescribed by § 25-814(C). 11  STRANG V. MALAY/HERNANDEZ Opinion of the Court ¶31 We also agree with Brummond that a biological father is not categorically precluded from maintaining the judicial action to establish paternity authorized by § 25-803 merely because another man’s paternity has previously been established by acknowledgment. See 243 Ariz. at 364–65 ¶¶ 14–21. Brummond recognized that the Legislature provided multiple statutory mechanisms for determining parentage and that a biological father’s judicial action is not displaced simply because an AOP exists, which the biological father may never have known about. Id. We adopt Brummond’s core reasoning that § 25-803 authorizes an independent action a non-party father may bring, but not any suggestion that § 25-812(E) never applies; that subsection continues to govern challenges to an AOP brought by its signatories. See id. at 364–65 ¶¶ 16–18. We do not, however, read Brummond as diminishing either the force and effect afforded an AOP under § 25-812(D) or the procedures governing challenges to that AOP under § 25-812(E). Rather, today’s decision harmonizes those provisions by recognizing that an AOP remains fully effective while the superior court adjudicates the independent action authorized by § 25-803 and, if applicable, resolves competing statutory claims pursuant to § 25-814(C). ¶32 The court of appeals addressed § 25-812(E) in Roger S. There, the court held that, after the sixty-day rescission period, a voluntary AOP may be challenged only through a timely Rule 85 motion alleging fraud, duress, or material mistake of fact, reading § 25-812(E) together with the corresponding federal requirement. Roger S., 251 Ariz. at 558 ¶ 16. We agree with Roger S. to that limited extent: § 25-812(E) supplies the exclusive grounds and procedure for setting aside an AOP as between those whose parentage it fixes. To the extent Roger S. applied those limitations to bar a non-party biological father from pursuing the independent action authorized by § 25-803, we disagree, for the reasons already stated. Id. ¶ 17. Roger S. construed only § 25-812; it did not address § 25-803 or § 25-814, and it did not decide the question presented here. Id. Our holding is limited to the conclusion that § 25-812(E) does not categorically bar a biological father who was not a party to an AOP from maintaining the independent action authorized by § 25-803 and, upon establishing the statutory prerequisites, obtaining the determination required by § 25-814(C). We disapprove Roger S., McQuillen, Gutierrez, and Johnson only insofar as they treat an AOP as foreclosing the § 25-814(C) balancing or as barring a non-party father’s independent § 25-803 action, and we leave undisturbed their holdings on the questions those courts actually decided, including Roger S.’s statement about third-party fathers, which was unnecessary to a disposition reached 12  STRANG V. MALAY/HERNANDEZ Opinion of the Court without the § 25-803 and § 25-814 analysis now before us. ¶33 Nor does Rule 85 compel a different result. Rule 85 governs relief from judgments and orders, including AOPs challenged pursuant to § 25-812(E). See Ariz. R. Fam. Law P. 85(c). But Rule 85 also expressly provides that it “does not limit the court’s power to entertain an independent action.” Ariz. R. Fam. Law P. 85(d)(1). Consistent with that language, we conclude that Rule 85 regulates efforts to obtain relief from an AOP itself; it does not extinguish an independent statutory cause of action that the Legislature has authorized elsewhere. ¶34 Hernandez’s reliance on Johnson is misplaced. Johnson involved a direct effort to obtain relief from an existing judgment establishing paternity and therefore turned on the procedural rules governing such relief. 252 Ariz. at 233–35 ¶¶ 15–22. It did not consider the independent judicial action authorized by § 25-803 or the interaction among §§ 25-803, -812, and -814 when a biological father who was not a party to an AOP asserts a competing statutory claim. To the extent Johnson disagreed with Brummond and suggested that any challenge to an acknowledgment-based determination—whatever its form—is subject to § 25-812(E), we decline to follow it as applied to a non-party father’s independent action under § 25-803. Because Johnson otherwise involved a direct effort to set aside an existing paternity judgment, it does not control the disposition of this case. ¶35 We do not decide whether Strang is entitled to relief from Hernandez’s AOP under Rule 85. The issue we decide is whether the existence of Hernandez’s AOP categorically barred the superior court from considering the independent action Strang asserted under § 25-803. Because the statutory scheme does not compel that result, the superior court erred in concluding that § 25-812(E) ended its inquiry. ¶36 Once Strang alleged facts that, if proven, would establish the statutory presumption arising under § 25-814(A)(2), the superior court was required to determine whether Strang established the presumption recognized in § 25-814(A)(2) and, if so, conduct the analysis required by § 25-814(C) for competing presumptions. At that point, the superior court could not decline to perform the inquiry that § 25-814(C) expressly requires whenever the statutory prerequisites for its application are satisfied. We express no opinion concerning how the superior court should ultimately 13  STRANG V. MALAY/HERNANDEZ Opinion of the Court resolve that analysis. The Legislature committed that determination to the superior court based upon the facts presented and the “weightier considerations of policy and logic.” See § 25-814(C). Once the superior court resolves any competing presumptions under § 25-814(C), its determination establishes which presumption controls under Arizona’s statutory framework. ¶37 This construction also accords with the settled principle that courts should avoid deciding constitutional questions unless necessary to resolve the case. See Hayes, 178 Ariz. at 273. Because the statutes may reasonably be harmonized without nullifying any provision, we have no occasion to decide whether § 25-812(E) would withstand constitutional scrutiny if construed to forever bar a biological father who received no notice and was not a party to an AOP from maintaining the independent action authorized by § 25-803. The interest that gives us pause is not a vested parental status but the unwed father’s opportunity to be heard on his own claim of paternity—the very opportunity Lehr recognized—and the avoidance canon asks only whether the competing construction raises a serious constitutional doubt, not whether the claimant would ultimately prevail. So, the dissent’s reliance on Lehr’s observation that a biological link alone is not dispositive mistakes both the interest at stake and the office of the canon. ¶38 In conducting that analysis, the superior court remains free to consider any arguments or defenses properly preserved and not inconsistent with this opinion. We express no opinion concerning the ultimate resolution of the parties’ competing claims, the applicability of any equitable defenses (which may include delay, prejudice, laches, reliance interests, and the child’s welfare), or whether any party may be entitled to relief from the AOP under § 25-812(E) and Rule 85. Those questions remain for the superior court to resolve in the first instance as appropriate. C. The Dissent’s Objections ¶39 The dissent’s principal objections share a single methodology: each collapses a distinction that the statutes take care to keep apart. The dissent treats establishing paternity and disestablishing an AOP as one act; a rebuttable presumption and a preclusive judgment as one effect; and an AOP’s force between the two people who signed it and its effect on a stranger who did not as one and the same. Kept distinct, as the text keeps 14  STRANG V. MALAY/HERNANDEZ Opinion of the Court them, the dissent’s objections dissolve. 1. A Perfected Acknowledgment of Paternity Is a Presumption Under § 25-814(A)(4), Not a Self-Executing “Court Decree” Under § 25-814(C) ¶40 The dissent’s central premise is that a perfected AOP, because it carries “the same force and effect as a superior court judgment,” § 25-812(D), is itself the “court decree establishing paternity of the child by another man” that ends the inquiry under the final sentence of § 25-814(C). To preserve that premise, the dissent must limit § 25-814(A)(4) to unfiled AOPs, reasoning that only an unperfected AOP is a mere presumption while a perfected one is a decree. The statute will not bear that division. ¶41 Section 25-814(A)(4) presumes paternity where “[a] notarized or witnessed statement is signed by both parents acknowledging paternity.” Its text contains no filing requirement and no cross-reference to § 25-812; it does not distinguish a filed AOP from an unfiled one. The dissent supplies that distinction, but “courts will not read into a statute something which is not within the manifest intention of the [L]egislature as indicated by the statute itself,” and courts “will not inflate, expand, stretch or extend a statute to matters not falling within its expressed provisions.” In re M.N., 259 Ariz. at 141 ¶ 28 (citation modified). That the Legislature knew how to condition an AOP’s legal force on filing—and did so expressly in § 25-812—confirms that the unqualified presumption in § 25-814(A)(4) was not meant to carry the same limitation. See Stambaugh, 242 Ariz. at 511 ¶ 15. ¶42 The dissent’s reading also violates the whole-text rule it invokes elsewhere. We read the paternity statutes “as a cohesive whole so that no word or provision is rendered superfluous.” Serrato, 259 Ariz. at 497 ¶ 16 (citation modified). If every perfected AOP were a § 25-814(C) “court decree” that rebuts all competing presumptions, the presumption that § 25-814(A)(4) creates could never be weighed against any other, and subsection (A)(4) would do no work at all. Our construction, by contrast, gives each provision meaning: § 25-814(A)(4) supplies the presumption, and the final sentence of § 25-814(C) is best read to speak to a litigated decree entered after adjudication—not to a clerk-issued AOP that subsection (A)(4) already classifies as a presumption. Section 25-812(D)’s “same force and effect as a superior court judgment” fixes what the AOP accomplishes between the parties who executed it; it does not transform the 15  STRANG V. MALAY/HERNANDEZ Opinion of the Court AOP into a § 25-814(C) decree that forecloses a stranger’s claim. ¶43 The dissent points finally to § 25-815, under which a paternity determination made in another state “by a court . . . or voluntary acknowledgment” has “the same force and effect in this state as if . . . granted by a court in this state,” and to §§ 25-813 and -818, which refer to “order[s] of paternity” without distinguishing their source. Section 25-815 is a recognition provision: it directs our courts to give a sister-state determination whatever effect a like determination would receive here, and so it imports the effect Arizona law assigns rather than defining it. That effect, as between the signatories, is the judgment status § 25-812(D) confers and that we have already acknowledged; § 25-815 does not make an AOP into the “court decree establishing paternit