Case Name: Peggy J. HAVILLE, Appellant (Respondent below), v. Michael HAVILLE, Appellee (Petitioner below)
Court: Supreme Court of Indiana
Jurisdiction: Indiana
Decision Date: 2005-04-13
Citations: 825 N.E.2d 375
Docket Number: No. 79S02-0310-CV-482
Parties: Peggy J. HAVILLE, Appellant (Respondent below), v. Michael HAVILLE, Appellee (Petitioner below).
Judges: SULLIVAN and BOEHM, JJ., concur. SHEPARD, C.J., concurs in result with separate opinion in which RUCKER, J., joins.
Reporter: North Eastern Reporter 2d
Volume: 825
Pages: 375–380

Head Matter:
Peggy J. HAVILLE, Appellant (Respondent below), v. Michael HAVILLE, Appellee (Petitioner below).
No. 79S02-0310-CV-482.
Supreme Court of Indiana.
April 13, 2005.
Cynthia L. Garwood, Lafayette, IN, Attorney for Appellant.
Jason W. Bennett, James A. Gothard, Bennett, Boehning & Clary, Lafayette, IN, Attorneys for Appellee.

Opinion:
DICKSON, Justice.
Peggy Haville ("former wife") appeals from the trial court's dismissal of her petition for modification of the dissolution decree approving the parties' settlement agreement under which Michael Haville ("former husband") was to pay maintenance of $400.00 per month for the remainder of the wife's life. The Court of Appeals affirmed in a published decision. Haville v. Haville, 787 N.E.2d 410 (Ind.Ct.App.2003). We granted transfer, 804 N.E.2d 755 (Ind.2003)(table), and now hold that maintenance may be ordered that continues beyond the death of the obligor, but that the trial court lacked the authority to modify the parties' specific agreement here providing for fixed spousal maintenance not subject to modification.
The parties' marriage was dissolved on December 16, 1997. The parties agree that the wife suffers from Multiple Sclerosis and that, by the time their dissolution was finalized, she was confined to a wheelchair. As part of their settlement agreement, which was approved and incorporated in the dissolution decree, the parties agreed as follows:
SPOUSAL MAINTENANCE
1. Wife is permanently disabled, however, Wife receives substantial sums from Purdue University and the Social Security Administration. Those amounts are being taken into account in determining the amount of spousal maintenance that is being paid to Wife.
2. Husband shall pay directly to Wife maintenance in the amount of $400.00 per month for the remainder of her life. ~
Appellant's App'x. at 11 (emphasis added). The final section of the agreement included the following among its fifteen numbered paragraphs:
MISCELLANEOUS
1. In consideration of all promises contained in his agreement,. the parties shall release all claims and rights which either ever had, now has or might hereafter have against the other by reason of their former relationship as Husband and Wife, or otherwise, excepting all of the claims and rights of each party created and outstanding against the other pursuant to the terms of this agreement. It is the intent hereof that each party hereby accepts the provisions of this agreement in full release and settlement of any and all claims and right [sic] against the other. It is the further agreement of the parties that the provisions of this agreement shall inure to the benefit of, and be binding upon, the heirs, executors, administrators, and personal representatives of the parties hereto unless otherwise provided herein.
3. This is an agreement to settle all property and spousal maintenance rights between Husband and Wife in the event a dissolution shall be entered by the Court....
Id. at 13, 14 (emphasis added).
In March of 2002, the former wife petitioned the trial court to increase the amount of her monthly maintenance award. Granting the former husband's motion to dismiss the petition, the trial court noted that the maintenance provision was payable beyond the husband's death and thus found that it was not modifiable "because it was based upon an agreement of the parties and exceeded the powers of the Court in the absence of the parties' agreement." Id. at 45 (citing Voigt v. Voigt, 670 N.E.2d 1271 (Ind.1996)).
In Voigt, this Court held that "a court has no statutory authority to grant a con-. tested petition to modify a maintenance obligation that arises under a previously approved settlement agreement if the court alone could not initially have imposed an identical obligation had the parties never voluntarily agreed to it." Id. at 1280 (emphasis added). We expressly reserved, however, "the question whether a court may modify a maintenance obligation that originated in a settlement agreement but that rested on a ground-incapacity, caregiving, or rehabilitation-on which the court could have ordered the same maintenance in the absence of agreement." Id. at 1280 n. 18.
Asserting that the present case falls within the issue reserved in Voigt, the former wife contends that the trial court did have the authority to make the maintenance award agreed to by the parties. She acknowledges Indiana decisions holding that a maintenance obligation terminates with the death of the obligor, but asserts that this applies only where an agreement or decree is silent, thus implying that a trial court may impose a maintenance obligation that continues after the death of the obligor. The former husband argues that maintenance payments may not be continued after the death of the payor.
In Hicks v. Fielman, 421 N.E.2d 716 (Ind.Ct.App.1981), the parties' agreement required the husband to pay a gross sum "alimony judgment" in fixed monthly installments, but which were to cease upon the wife's death or remarriage. Observing that this constituted a judgment of "periodic alimony: maintenance," id. at 722, the court stated: "Unless an agreement or decree calling for maintenance clearly says otherwise, maintenance payments can not accrue after the death of the person liable for them." Id. at 720. It later explains: "[The obligation to pay periodic alimony ceases with the death of the person liable for it. This seems to be the general rule when the decree allowing alimony does not provide that payments shall continue after the death of the payor." Id. at 722. Hicks was cited in Brown v. Guardianship of Brown, 775 N.E.2d 1164 (Ind.Ct.App.2002), for the proposition that a "claim for maintenance after the death of her former husband could not as a matter of law sue-ceed because the decree awarding such maintenance did not provide that the payments would continue after the death of the payor." Id. at 1166. Like Hicks, the obligation to pay spousal support in Brown did not include any requirement that such payments survive the obligor's death. The court in Brown thus concluded, "an obligation to pay periodic spousal support, such as in this case, ceases with the death of the person liable for it." Id. at 1167.
Indiana case law thus does not prohibit a maintenance obligation from surviving the death of the obligor where the decree so provides. Furthermore, maintenance for a spouse's incapacity, lasting beyond the death of the obligor, is authorized by statute. Where a spouse is incapacitated such that the spouse's ability of self-support is materially affected, a court "may find that maintenance for the spouse is necessary during the period of incapacity, subject to further order of the court." Ind.Code § 31-15-7-2(1) (emphasis added). The duration of this authorized maintenance obligation is expressly measured by the period of the recipient's incapacity and not by the lifetime of the obligor.
Here, the parties settlement agreement explicitly directs the husband to pay monthly maintenance to the wife "for the remainder of her life." Appellant's App'x. at 11. In addition, the agreement provisions are "binding upon the heirs, executors, administrators, and personal representatives of the parties." Id. at 18. It is undisputed that this maintenance obligation rested on the wife's incapacity. Thus, if the parties' settlement agreement provided only that maintenance be paid to the wife for the remainder of her life, the court could have ordered the same maintenance in the absence of agreement and such facts would present the question reserved in Voigt.
The maintenance agreement in this case, however, goes beyond merely requiring payment for the lifetime of the former wife: it also prohibits future modification claims. The agreement provides that the agreement settles all "spousal maintenance rights" and releases "all claims and rights which either ever had, now has or might hereafter have against the other by reason of their former relationship as Husband and Wife." Because Indiana Code § 31-15-7-8 provides that spousal maintenance authorized by statute may be modified, the trial court lacked the authority to order maintenance payments that were not subject to modification. Thus lacking the power on its own to order non-modifiable spousal maintenance, the trial court lacked authority to thereafter modify the maintenance obligation created by the previously approved settlement agreement. Voigt, 670 N.E.2d at 1280.
Transfer having previously been granted, we affirm the trial court order dismissing the petition for modification of maintenance.
SULLIVAN and BOEHM, JJ., concur. SHEPARD, C.J., concurs in result with separate opinion in which RUCKER, J., joins.
. The death of an obligor is not a structural impediment to such an obligation. With respect to child support, for example, provisions for child support are not terminated by the death of the obligated parent. Ind.Code § 31-16-6-7(a)(2).
. While not addressed and answered in Voigt, the question is clearly resolved by statute. As noted above, the statutory authorization for incapacity maintenance provides that such an order is "subject to further order of the court." Ind.Code § 31-15-7-2(1). - Moreover, Indiana Code § 31-15-7-3 expressly declares that provisions of an order for maintenance authorized by statute "may be modified or revoked" upon specified grounds, one of which is "a showing of changed circumstances so substantial and continuing as to make the terms unreasonable."