Opinion ID: 1199835
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: lower court authority analyzed

Text: The trial court relied on Potter v. Wilson, 609 P.2d 1278 (Okla. 1980), as the basis for his ruling. The reliance is misplaced. Potter does not address the issue of an attorney's standing to pursue fees in a divorce action. Potter involved a husband bringing an action against his ex-wife to hold her in contempt for failing to comply with a court order which gave her title to a jointly owned enterprise, required her to assume the outstanding indebtedness of the business and hold the husband harmless on the debt. In differentiating such a debt from other monetary liabilities potentially involved in a divorce action we merely stated that attorney fees awarded by the court in a divorce action are accessory to and in the same category as the obligation to pay support alimony. Id. at 1281. Husband apparently attempts to argue here (and the trial court apparently agreed) that because counsel fees, like support alimony, are generally thought of as being status based liabilities and awarded in divorce litigation based on need, once the person claiming entitlement to the fees dies, there can no longer be recovery because, obviously, a dead person can no longer have a need for the fees. In our view, this is a much too simplistic way to look at the issues before us because it ignores the fact the attorney who has rendered services also has a personal stake in the outcome of any attorney fee award as we will explain below. We, thus, do not believe Potter answers the issues present in this case. The Court of Appeals, rather than relying on Potter, relied partially on Kelly v. Maupin, 177 Okla. 44, 58 P.2d 116 (1936), to support their affirmance of the trial court. Kelly held an attorney has the right to enforce through contempt proceedings an order requiring a husband in a divorce action to pay his wife's temporary attorney fees even though the wife had dismissed her divorce petition. The Court of Appeals correctly recognized, however, Kelly limited its holding to the situation where an order awarding attorney fees had already been made prior to dismissal. They note Kelly cites Rogers v. Daniel, 92 Okla. 47, 217 P. 881 (1923), for the proposition a wife's attorney could not maintain an independent action against the husband to recover attorney fees where the divorce case was voluntarily dismissed by the wife prior to the order awarding the fees. The Court of Appeals, thus, used Rogers to hold here, absent an order directing a husband to pay his wife's attorney fees, an attorney lacks standing to prosecute any claim for fees independent of the wife's own application for such fees or independent of the wife's personal representative's application for such fees in a case where the wife has died post-divorce decree. We believe the Court of Appeals erred in such view. Rogers is not controlling here because in Rogers there was no longer any pending action when the fees were requested, while in the present matter the divorce case was still pending when the fees were requested, although it had progressed to a post-divorce decree stage. This distinction is critical to a correct determination of the instant situation. [2]