Source: http://masscases.com/cases/sjc/442/442mass151.html
Timestamp: 2019-04-25 22:33:23+00:00

Document:
Divorce and Separation, Alimony, Death of party. Practice, Civil, Stipulation. Words, "Until death or remarriage."
CIVIL ACTION commenced in the Superior Court Department on November 24, 1998.
Motions for summary judgment were heard by Diane M. Kottmyer, J., and entry of a separate and final judgment was ordered by Regina L. Quinlan, J.
John M. Reed (Thomas A. Reed with him) for the interveners.
Shannon M. Fitzpatrick for the plaintiff.
Pauline Quirion, for Women's Bar Association & another, amici curiae, submitted a brief.
In 1998, Barbara Cohan (plaintiff) brought an action in the Superior Court against the administrator of the estate of her former husband, Henry H. Cohan (decedent), seeking a declaratory judgment that the stipulation required the estate to pay her alimony until her death or remarriage. [Note 4] The decedent's two children by his second marriage, the primary beneficiaries of his estate, intervened. The plaintiff and the intervener defendants filed cross motions for summary judgment. The judge denied summary judgment without prejudice, finding that the language of the stipulation was ambiguous. The parties renewed their motions for summary judgment, submitting affidavits and other evidence purporting to show what the stipulation intended. Based on that evidence, the judge determined that the stipulation did not contemplate postmortem alimony, and granted partial summary judgment for the defendants. See note 4, supra. The plaintiff appealed. The Appeals Court vacated the judgment, concluding that the terms of the stipulation required postmortem alimony payments so long as the plaintiff remained alive and unmarried. Cohan v. Feuer, 58 Mass. App. Ct. 223 (2003). We granted the defendants' application for further appellate review, and now affirm the Superior Court judgment.
The decedent defaulted on his support obligations, was briefly jailed for the offense, and eventually left New Jersey without informing the plaintiff of his whereabouts. Eventually she located him; he had remarried and was practicing medicine in Massachusetts. She filed an enforcement action in the District Court under G. L. c. 273A (Uniform Reciprocal Enforcement of Support Act). [Note 7] On August 17, 1977, a District Court judge issued an order enforcing the New Jersey decree, which had recently been modified by a New Jersey judge to reduce the amount of child support to $306 a month because the parties' eldest child had become emancipated.
third of the child support order ($153 a month), or in the alternative, to restore the 1977 order for $540 a month in alimony and $306 a month in child support.
At the court house on the day of the hearing, the plaintiff and the decedent executed a handwritten stipulation. The stipulation, which was approved by the judge and entered as an order, required the decedent to pay the plaintiff $475 a month in alimony and $150 a month in child support. The child support payments were to terminate in June, 1984, when the parties' youngest child would be graduated from college. Alimony was to "cease upon the death or remarriage of the [plaintiff]."
The decedent died on January 15, 1998, leaving behind two former wives, two sons and one daughter from his first marriage, and one son and one minor daughter from his second marriage. No provision was made in his will for support payments to the plaintiff, nor had he named her as a beneficiary of any life insurance or annuity contract, or other asset.
Dissolution: Analysis and Recommendations § 5.07 comment b (2002). Second, the Commonwealth and the decedent's creditors and survivors have a strong interest in the finality of estates. See, e.g., Woodward v. Commissioner of Social Sec., 435 Mass. 536 , 547-548 (2002). With these principles in mind, we turn to the plaintiff's claim.
The plaintiff does not disagree with the general rule concerning the termination of alimony on the obligor's death. Rather, she asserts that the language in the stipulation -- alimony "shall cease upon the death or remarriage of the [plaintiff]" -- is an express agreement on the part of the parties and the court to override the general rule so that she may receive postmortem alimony. She argues that this conclusion is compelled by Taylor v. Gowetz, 339 Mass. 294 (1959), and Farrington v. Boston Safe Deposit & Trust Co., 280 Mass. 121 (1932), where we held that the presumption against postmortem alimony had been rebutted by similar language. We disagree.
In Farrington v. Boston Safe Deposit & Trust Co., supra at 122, 125, we held that language in a divorce decree that ordered the husband to pay his former wife alimony "during the term of her life" indicated the judge's intent to bind the husband's estate for alimony payments if he predeceased her. Similarly, in Taylor v. Gowetz, supra at 296, 299, we interpreted language in a separation agreement whereby the husband agreed to pay alimony "if and so long as the wife is living" to mean that the parties intended alimony payments to survive the husband's death. In contrast to the present case, however, the Taylor agreement and the Farrington order were entered in original proceedings, not in a subsequent enforcement action. Taylor v. Gowetz, supra at 296. Farrington v. Boston Safe Deposit & Trust Co., supra at 122. This is not a "difference without a distinction," as the plaintiff argues. It is a distinction that makes all the difference.
evidence clearly indicating that the parties had contemplated that the obligee spouse would benefit financially from the estate of the obligor spouse, should he die first. See Taylor v. Gowetz, supra at 296 (agreement required husband's estate to pay $10,000 to former wife); Farrington v. Boston Safe Deposit & Trust Co., supra at 123 (husband executed bond obligating him to obtain life insurance policy for benefit of his former wife, and to provide annuity for her in his will). By contrast, here we have a stipulation that sought to resolve the parties' ongoing dispute solely over the appropriate amount of monthly support payments due to the plaintiff under the terms of an underlying document, the original divorce decree, as previously modified. [Note 11] In this context we cannot interpret the stipulation in isolation from either the judicial decrees giving it life or the dispute it was intended to resolve. See Costello v. Commissioner of Revenue, 391 Mass. 567 , 570 (1984) ("A stipulation is not unlimited as to time, scope, or theory but must be interpreted in the context of the theory of the case").
The plaintiff nevertheless argues that she tendered "consideration" for an award of lifetime alimony by settling her lawsuit by stipulation. Given the context of the dispute, however, it appears that the plaintiff entered into the stipulation in order both to increase the amount of current alimony the decedent was at that time obligated to pay and to make it more difficult for the decedent, who had a history of defaulting on his support obligations, to obtain a further downward modification of alimony. [Note 13] We agree with the judge in the Superior Court that, in the circumstances of this case, "[n]o rational juror could find that the parties intended that the language used in the [s]tipulation would modify the New Jersey decree by creating an obligation to continue the alimony payments after the husband's death."
adopt § 5.07 of the ALI Principles of the Law of Family Dissolution: Analysis and Recommendations (2002), as modified for consistency with current Massachusetts law, and declare that an obligation to make periodic alimony payments ends automatically at the remarriage of the obligee or at the death of either party, without regard to the award's term as fixed in the decree or agreement, unless either (1) the original decree or agreement provides otherwise or the parties legally amend their agreement to provide otherwise, or (2) in the case of the obligor's death, the court makes written findings establishing that termination of the award would work a substantial injustice because of facts not present in most cases. [Note 14] In the present case, we merely decide that the language of this particular stipulation, interpreted in light of the facts surrounding this particular dispute, does not legally obligate the decedent's estate to continue paying the plaintiff alimony until her death or remarriage.
3. Conclusion. For the reasons stated above, we affirm the Superior Court judge's grant of partial summary judgment for the defendants.
[Note 1] Of the estate of Henry H. Cohan.
[Note 2] Rebecca M. Cohan, Benjamin A. Cohan, and Tikvah S. Portnoi, interveners. Rebecca M. Cohan, the decedent's second wife, from whom he was also divorced, intervened on behalf of Sarah B. Cohan, the decedent's minor daughter. Tikvah S. Portnoi is a trustee appointed under the will. Collectively, we refer to these parties as the "defendants."
[Note 3] We acknowledge the amicus brief filed by the Women's Bar Association and Greater Boston Legal Services.
[Note 4] The plaintiff also sought arrearages in alimony payments, an issue that is not before us.
[Note 5] While we do not have the original New Jersey divorce decree, there is evidence in the record, including later court decrees, the plaintiff's notice of demands against the decedent's estate, a brief filed by the plaintiff in the District Court, and an affidavit of the plaintiff, that indicate that at the time of the 1973 divorce, the decedent was ordered to pay to the plaintiff amounts representing her equitable share of the proceeds from the sale of the decedent's New Jersey medical practice, and fifty per cent of the practice's accounts receivable.
[Note 6] See note 9, infra.
[Note 7] In 1995, G. L. c. 273A was replaced by G. L. c. 209D (Uniform Interstate Family Support Act). St. 1995, c. 5, §§ 87 and 105.
[Note 8] It is unclear what prompted this order. It may have been at least partly related to the decedent and the plaintiff's second child's completing college.
[Note 9] At the time the original divorce decree was entered, New Jersey common law provided that "[t]he death of either the husband or the wife terminates the husband's obligation to support the wife." Modell v. Modell, 23 N.J. Super. 60, 62 (App. Div. 1952). See Jacobitte v. Jacobitte, 135 N.J. 571, 577-578 (1994) (noting State Legislature codified Modell principle in 1988 statutory amendment).
[Note 10] As we noted above, the original divorce decree included an equitable distribution of assets.
[Note 11] The stipulation itself acknowledges this larger context when it states: "Now come the Petitioner and the Respondent in the above matter and stipulate, subject to the approval of the court, that the original order of this court dated August 17, 1977 and modified on July 7, 1982 may be further modified as follows . . . ."
[Note 12] The plaintiff argues that because the brief constitutes inadmissible hearsay and is irrelevant, the Superior Court judge improperly relied on it. The brief is clearly relevant; we cannot interpret the stipulation apart from the surrounding controversy. See Costello v. Commissioner of Revenue, 391 Mass. 567 , 570 (1984). Because we do not consider the brief for the truth of the statements made therein, but merely as evidence of what arguments the plaintiff made to that court, it is not hearsay. See Bobick v. U.S. Fidelity & Guar. Co., 439 Mass. 652 , 656 n.8 (2003).
[Note 13] Our interpretation is further supported by the fact that the plaintiff's attorney for the District Court petition made no statement affirmatively supporting her client's claim. In her affidavit filed in the present case the attorney merely restates the language of the stipulation and says that "the language . . . speaks for itself." As such, there is no evidence that the parties discussed postmortem alimony as part of the negotiations resulting in the stipulation. Even more telling, after the decedent's death, the plaintiff mailed a copy of the stipulation to her attorney, with a note asking, "Can this be continued from his estate? I did not die or remarry." The fact that she asked this question strongly suggests that no such agreement was contemplated when the stipulation was signed. We note further that nothing in the history of the prolonged litigation between these parties over the issue of support indicates that the decedent would intentionally increase his support obligations both currently and into an indefinite time beyond his death.
[Note 14] Nothing we have said today changes the requisite standards for modification where both parties are still living. See, e.g., Schuler v. Schuler, 382 Mass. 366 , 368 (1981) (complainant, where original agreement merges into judgment, must demonstrate material change in circumstances); McCarthy v. McCarthy, 36 Mass. App. Ct. 490 , 490-491 (1994) (complainant seeking modification of survived agreement must demonstrate something more than material change of circumstances).

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