Source: https://law.justia.com/cases/california/court-of-appeal/4th/12/647.html
Timestamp: 2019-04-24 00:36:57+00:00

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HILDEGARD LEE BORELLI, Plaintiff and Appellant, v. GRACE G. BRUSSEAU, as Executor, etc., Defendant and Respondent.
 The only "facts" we can consider on this appeal from the sustaining of a demurrer are those "material facts properly pleaded, but not contentions, deductions or conclusions of fact or law." (Blank v. Kirwan (1985) 39 Cal. 3d 311, 318 [216 Cal. Rptr. 718, 703 P.2d 58].) Since both parties' briefs wander far from the allegations of the complaint we will set out those allegations in some detail.
"In or about October, 1988, [appellant] and the decedent entered an oral agreement whereby the decedent promised to leave to [appellant] the property listed [above], including a one hundred percent interest in the Sacramento property. ... In exchange for the decedent's promise to leave her the property ... [appellant] agreed to care for the decedent in his home, for the duration of his illness, thereby avoiding the need for him to move to a rest home or convalescent hospital as his doctors recommended. The agreement was based on the confidential relationship that existed between [appellant] and the decedent."
In accordance with these concerns the following pertinent legislation has been enacted: Civil Code section 242-"Every individual shall support his or her spouse ...." Civil Code section 4802-"[A] husband and wife cannot, by any contract with each other, alter their legal relations, except as to property. ..." Civil Code section 5100-"Husband and wife contract [12 Cal. App. 4th 652] toward each other obligations of mutual respect, fidelity, and support." Civil Code section 5103-"[E]ither husband or wife may enter into any transaction with the other ... respecting property, which either might if unmarried." Civil Code section 5132-"[A] married person shall support the person's spouse while they are living together. ..."
Estate of Sonnicksen (1937) 23 Cal. App. 2d 475, 479 [73 P.2d 643] and Brooks v. Brooks (1941) 48 Cal. App. 2d 347, 349-350 [119 P.2d 970], each hold that under the above statutes and in accordance with the above policy a wife is obligated by the marriage contract to provide nursing-type care to an ill husband. Therefore, contracts whereby the wife is to receive compensation for providing such services are void as against public policy; and there is no consideration for the husband's promise.
[5a] Appellant argues that Sonnicksen and Brooks are no longer valid precedents because they are based on outdated views of the role of women and marriage. She further argues that the rule of those cases denies her equal protection because husbands only have a financial obligation toward their [12 Cal. App. 4th 653] wives, while wives have to provide actual nursing services for free. We disagree. The rule and policy of Sonnicksen and Brooks have been applied to both spouses in several recent cases arising in different areas of the law.
In Krouse v. Graham (1977) 19 Cal. 3d 59, 66-67 [137 Cal. Rptr. 863, 562 P.2d 1022], an action for the wrongful death of the wife, the husband was allowed to recover consortium damages "for the loss of his wife's 'love, companionship, comfort, affection, society, solace or moral support, any loss of enjoyment of sexual relations, or any loss of her physical assistance in the operation or maintenance of the home.' " The wife "had recently retired as a legal secretary in order to care for her husband, Benjamin, whose condition of emphysema, in turn, caused him to retire and necessitated considerable nursing services."
We therefore adhere to the long-standing rule that a spouse is not entitled to compensation for support, apart from rights to community property and the like that arise from the marital relation itself. Personal performance of a personal duty created by the contract of marriage does not constitute a new consideration supporting the indebtedness, alleged in this case.
Speculating that appellant might have left her husband but for the agreement she alleges, the dissent suggests that marriages will break up if such [12 Cal. App. 4th 655] agreements are not enforced. While we do not believe that marriages would be fostered by a rule that encouraged sickbed bargaining, the question is not whether such negotiations may be more useful than unseemly. The issue is whether such negotiations are antithetical to the institution of marriage as the Legislature has defined it. We believe that they are.
A very ill person wishes to be cared for at home personally by his spouse rather than by nurses at a health care facility. The ill person offers to pay his spouse for such personal care by transferring property to her. The offer is accepted, the services are rendered and the ill spouse dies. Affirming a judgment of dismissal rendered after a general demurrer was sustained, this court holds that the contract was not enforceable because-as a matter of law-the spouse who rendered services gave no consideration. Apparently, in the majority's view she had a preexisting or precontract nondelegable duty to clean the bedpans herself. Because I do not believe she did, I respectfully dissent.
The majority correctly read Estate of Sonnicksen (1937) 23 Cal. App. 2d 475 [73 P.2d 643] and Brooks v. Brooks (1941) 48 Cal. App. 2d 347 [119 P.2d 970] as holding that a wife cannot enter into a binding contract with her husband to provide "nursing-type care" for compensation. (Maj. opn., ante, p. 652.) It reasons that the wife, by reason of the marital relationship, already has a duty to provide such care, thus she offers no new consideration to support an independent contract to the same effect. (See Civ. Code, §§ 1550, 1605.) The logic of these decisions is ripe for reexamination.
Sonnicksen and Brooks are the California Court of Appeal versions of a national theme. (See, e.g., Bohanan v. Maxwell (1921) 190 Iowa 1308 [181 N.W. 683, 14 A.L.R. 1004]; Foxworthy v. Adams (1910) 136 Ky. 403 [124 S.W. 381]; Martinez v. Martinez (1957) 62 N.M. 215 [307 P.2d 1117]; [12 Cal. App. 4th 656] Ritchie v. White (1945) 225 N.C. 450 [35 S.E.2d 414]; Oates v. Oates (1945) 127 W.Va. 469 [33 S.E.2d 457].) Excerpts from several of these decisions reveal the ethos and mores of the era which produced them.
Restraints on interspousal litigation are almost extinct. With the walls supposedly protecting the domestic haven from litigation already reduced to rubble, it hardly seems revolutionary to topple one more brick. Furthermore, in situations such as this, where one spouse has died, preserving " 'domestic life [from] discord and mischief' " (Brooks v. Brooks, supra, 48 Cal. App. 2d 347 at p. 350) seems an academic concern that no modern academic seems concerned with.
Reduced to its essence, the alleged contract at issue here was an agreement to transmute Mr. Borelli's separate property into the separate property of his wife. fn. 2 Had there been no marriage and had they been total strangers, there is no doubt Mr. Borelli could have validly contracted to receive her services in exchange for certain of his property. The mere existence of a marriage certificate should not deprive competent adults of the "utmost freedom of contract" they would otherwise possess.
No one doubts that spouses owe each other a duty of support or that this encompasses "the obligation to provide medical care." (Hawkins v. Superior Court (1979) 89 Cal. App. 3d 413, 418-419 [152 Cal. Rptr. 491].) There is nothing found in Sonnicksen and Brooks, or cited by the majority, which requires that this obligation be personally discharged by a spouse except the decisions themselves. However, at the time Sonnicksen and Brooks were decided-before World War II-it made sense for those courts to say that a [12 Cal. App. 4th 660] wife could perform her duty of care only by doing so personally. That was an accurate reflection of the real world for women years before the exigency of war produced substantial employment opportunities for them. For most women at that time there was no other way to take care of a sick husband except personally. So to the extent those decisions hold that a contract to pay a wife for caring personally for her husband is without consideration they are correct only because at the time they were decided there were no other ways she could meet her obligation of care. Since that was the universal reality, she was giving up nothing of value by agreeing to perform a duty that had one and only one way of being performed.
According to the majority, Mrs. Borelli had nothing to bargain with so long as she remained in the marriage. This assumes that an intrinsic component of the marital relationship is the personal services of the spouse, an obligation that cannot be delegated or performed by others. The preceding discussion has attempted to demonstrate many ways in which what the majority terms "nursing-type care" can be provided without either husband or wife being required to empty a single bedpan. It follows that, because Mrs. Borelli agreed to supply this personal involvement, she was providing something over and above what would fully satisfy her duty of support. That personal something-precisely because it was something she was not required to do-qualifies as valid consideration sufficient to make enforceable Mr. Borelli's reciprocal promise to convey certain of his separate property.
Not only does the majority's position substantially impinge upon couples' freedom to come to a working arrangement of marital responsibilities, it may [12 Cal. App. 4th 661] also foster the very opposite result of that intended. For example, nothing compelled Mr. Borelli and plaintiff to continue living together after his physical afflictions became known. Moral considerations notwithstanding, no legal force could have stopped plaintiff from leaving her husband in his hour of need. Had she done so, and had Mr. Borelli promised to give her some of his separate property should she come back, a valid contract would have arisen upon her return. Deeming them contracts promoting reconciliation and the resumption of marital relations, California courts have long enforced such agreements as supported by consideration. (E.g., Bowden v. Bowden (1917) 175 Cal. 711 [167 P. 154]; Braden v. Braden (1960) 178 Cal. App. 2d 481 [3 Cal. Rptr. 120].) Here so far as we can tell from the face of the complaint, Mr. Borelli and plaintiff reached largely the same result without having to endure a separation. fn. 3 There is no sound reason why their contract, which clearly facilitated continuation of their marriage, should be any less valid. It makes no sense to say that spouses have greater bargaining rights when separated than they do during an unruptured marriage.
What, then, justifies the ban on interspousal agreements of the type refused enforcement by Sonnicksen, Brooks, and the majority? At root it appears to be the undeniable allure of the thought that, for married persons, "to attend, nurse, and care for each other ... should be the natural prompting of that love and affection which should always exist between husband and wife." (Foxworthy v. Adams, supra, 124 S.W. 381 at p. 383.) All married persons would like to believe that their spouses would cleave unto them through thick and thin, in sickness and in health. Without question, there is something profoundly unsettling about an illness becoming the subject of interspousal negotiations conducted over a hospital sickbed. Yet sentiment cannot substitute for common sense and modern day reality. Interspousal litigation may be unseemly, but it is no longer a novelty. The majority preserves intact an anomalous rule which gives married persons less than the utmost freedom of contract they are supposed to possess. The majority's rule leaves married people with contracting powers which are more limited than those enjoyed by unmarried persons or than is justified by legitimate public policy. In this context public policy should not be equated with coerced altruism. Mr. Borelli was a grown man who, having amassed a sizeable amount of property, should be treated-at least on demurrer-as competent [12 Cal. App. 4th 662] to make the agreement alleged by plaintiff. The public policy of California will not be outraged by affording plaintiff the opportunity to try to enforce that agreement.
FN 2. Plaintiff makes reference in her complaint to a "1980 written antenuptial contract" that she alleges she "signed ... one day before her wedding." Although the record does not include a copy of this contract, it seems obvious from the context of this litigation that its general import was to segregate and preserve substantial assets as to Mr. Borelli's separate property.
FN 3. Plaintiff's allegation in her complaint that she forewent the opportunity "to live an independent life in consideration of her agreement" with Mr. Borelli carries the clear implication that she would have separated from him but for the agreement.

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