Source: http://www.massachusetts-divorce.com/cases/Larson-v-Larson1991.html
Timestamp: 2019-04-24 02:07:48+00:00

Document:
LAURENCE, J. The present appeal contests the validity of Probate Court contempt judgments against Richard A. Larson (Richard) for refusing to make child support payments to Judy R. Larson (Judy), as required by a separation agreement (the agreement) incorporated into, but explicitly surviving, the parties' divorce judgment. [Note 1] Richard presents several arguments against the judgments and the judge's refusal to set them aside on his motions. All of them condense to a single proposition: that the Probate Court lacked jurisdiction to enter the judgments. Richard's position, however, is based upon a misreading of a prior opinion of this court and a misapplication of principles of res judicata and related doctrines. We, accordingly, affirm the judgments.
The agreement provided that the monthly payments were to continue until certain specified events. The only terminating event relevant to this litigation was to occur when all of the children became "emancipated according to law." The record is silent as to what the parties intended by that phrase. Upon that event, Richard's payments to Judy would cease to include child support and would equal thirty percent of his annual gross earned income. The agreement also obligated Richard to pay the children's educational and related expenses. Finally, it declared that any "dispute or misunderstanding arising under this [a]greement as to the meaning, interpretation, application or performance of any provision of this [a]greement . . . shall be submitted to the Middlesex Probate and Family Court if the parties are unable to resolve the question by mutual agreement."
It was "apparent that Richard's reduction in support payments was pursuant to the emancipation clause of the agreement." Larson v. Larson, 28 Mass. App. Ct. 338 , 339 n.1 (1990) (Larson I). Richard appears to have implicitly adopted the position that Elizabeth's eighteenth birthday on April 1, 1987, had triggered the support termination provision of the agreement and that the monthly child support obligation had thereupon ceased. [Note 3] Inexplicably, however, neither party referred to or relied upon the agreement in the course of the proceedings on Judy's 1987 complaint for contempt. Instead, they tried the case on the single legal theory that G. L. c. 208, Section 28, governed Judy's entitlement to child support. [Note 4] Richard submitted as the outcome-determinative issue that Judy failed to satisfy one of the two statutory standards authorizing the court to order support for a child between the ages of eighteen and twenty-one, namely, whether Elizabeth was "principally dependent" upon her for maintenance. See Larson I, supra at 339-341.
2. The present proceedings. On April 1, 1990, when Elizabeth, then a college junior, became twenty-one, Richard again curtailed his child support payments, without explanation. On May 29, 1990, Judy filed a new complaint for contempt for the full amounts of the April and May, 1990, payments. [Note 6] Richard, who had by that time left Massachusetts to reside in Maine, was personally served on June 13, 1990, with copies of the complaint and the summons, which ordered him to appear at the Probate Court at 9:00 A.M. on August 1, 1990. At some point in early June, 1990, Richard's then attorney also received copies of these documents from Judy's attorney.
The judge questioned Richard at the August 22, 1990, hearing as to his reasons for not appearing or taking any action earlier. Richard testified, inconsistently with his former counsel's affidavit, that he had in fact discussed matters with his former counsel after reviewing Judy's May, 1990, complaint and was told by counsel that he did not have to appear. The judge also received an affidavit from Judy's attorney materially contradicting the affidavit of Richard's former counsel regarding the events surrounding that counsel's late July request for a stipulated continuance. With all this in hand, the judge denied Richard's motions (later recalling that he simply did not believe Richard's explanation for his nonappearance). Richard took a timely appeal from the denials and from the August 1, 1990, contempt judgment on August 24, 1990.
3. The Probate Court's jurisdiction. Richard's entire argument on appeal depends upon the success of his proposition that the Probate Court's judgments are void as matter of law because the court lacked jurisdiction to order support once Elizabeth turned twenty-one. [Note 10] Richard correctly states that a Probate Court judge has no authority under G. L. c. 208, Section 28, to make support orders for a child over twenty-one. He then insists that the court's only jurisdiction in this case was provided by that statute, leaving it without any basis to order support for a child such as Elizabeth.
Without citing or discussing Kotler v. Spaulding, 24 Mass. App. Ct. 515 , 517-520 (1987), Richard implicitly acknowledges that, where a divorce judgment provides by its terms for child support past the age of twenty-one, the Probate Court retains the power to enforce the provision through contempt orders. He contends, however, that the parties' agreement here is no longer a source of jurisdiction, despite its express bestowal of jurisdiction on the Probate Court over disputes as to its meaning and application. Judy is barred from resort to the agreement, he maintains, by the doctrines of claim preclusion, issue preclusion, and judicial estoppel. He asserts that Larson I operates as res judicata, precluding Judy from relying on the agreement, because she has waived her rights to child support pursuant to the agreement. The alleged waiver consisted of allowing the earlier litigation to proceed solely on the basis of G. L. c. 208, Section 28. Richard's argument [Note 11] is without merit. The contention that Judy waived reliance on the agreement ignores the determinative fact that this appeal does not deal with the same claims, issues, or arguments as did Larson I. That decision announced, as emphatically as could be done, that it did not address the agreement, let alone consider the meaning or application of the term "emancipated according to law." Larson I, supra at 341.
The original contempt judgment that gave rise to Larson I, dated September 30, 1988, involved claims for violation of the divorce judgment's monthly payment obligations through that date only, as did the Larson I opinion. The judgments at issue in the present appeal cover claims for subsequent payment violations, from April through September, 1990. These later violations were not and could not have been raised in the original action because the times for payment had not yet occurred or given rise to any cause of action in favor of Judy. Each violation of Richard's continuing monthly payment obligation under the divorce judgment constituted a new claim for preclusion purposes, as with any contract calling for continuous separate performances over a period of time or for payment of money in separate installments. See Dunbar v. Dunbar, 180 Mass. 170 , 173 (1901), aff'd, 190 U.S. 340 (1903); Phelps v. Shawprint, Inc., 328 Mass. 352 , 356-358 (1952); 18 Wright, Miller & Cooper, Federal Practice & Procedure Section 4409, at 77-78 n.11 (1981); 4 Corbin, Contracts Sections 948, 949, & 956 (1951). Accordingly, the doctrine of claim preclusion cannot provide a basis for Richard's jurisdictional argument.
c. Judicial estoppel. This term appears to describe the doctrine that a party who has maintained one position in a legal proceeding may not, in a subsequent proceeding between the same parties, assume a contrary or inconsistent position, at least when the prior position has been acted or relied upon by an adverse party. While this basic principle seems to be recognized in Massachusetts, see Brown v. Quinn, 406 Mass. 641 , 646 (1990), application of the doctrine would be inappropriate here because Judy has not taken contrary positions in the two lawsuits. It is perfectly consistent for her to have argued, in the prior case, that Elizabeth was principally dependent upon her for support, as defined by G. L. c. 208, Section 28, and to argue, in the present action, that Richard remains bound to pay child support pursuant to the agreement. Cf. Turner v. McCune, 4 Mass. App. Ct. 864 , 865 (1976) (emancipation is not automatic upon reaching the age of majority). Compare Brown v. Quinn, supra at 646 (argument that an appeal was premature estopped because it contradicted party's earlier position that judgment appealed from was final). Until Elizabeth turned twenty-one, Judy in fact had no occasion or necessity to resort to the agreement, since G. L. c. 208, Section 28, provided a sufficient alternative basis to enforce Richard's support obligations.

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