Opinion ID: 2081133
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Heading: The Statutory Basis

Text: Before reexamining the statutory basis for a lack of contractual capacity, we must consider whether Bendler's construction of N.J.S.A. 37:2-5 has received legislative endorsement, for such approval would foreclose our review. We recognize that legislative silence has been held to indicate acquiescence in a judicial construction. See, e.g., Lemke v. Bailey, 41 N.J. 295, 301 (1963). Such inaction, however, may also mean nothing more than that the Legislature did not act. White v. Township of North Bergen, 77 N.J. 538, 556 (1978); see 2A Sands, Sutherland Statutory Construction, § 49.10 at 261 (4th ed. 1973). We have held the better view to be that [t]he intent expressed in [a statute] is a judicial question with respect to which the inaction of subsequent legislatures is not dispositive. State v. Sands, 76 N.J. 127, 137-138 n. 1 (1978). See Schmoll v. Creecy, 54 N.J. 194, 203 (1969). We now consider the construction of N.J.S.A. 37:2-5 in Bendler to be in error. This conclusion emerges from both a proper assessment of the provision itself and recent decisions of this Court rejecting the interpretive approach of Bendler. N.J.S.A. 37:2-5 provides: Nothing in this chapter contained shall enable a husband or wife to contract with or to sue each other, except as heretofore, and except as authorized by this chapter. On its face, the statute purports simply to dispel any notion that legislation has altered the rights of husbands and wives to contract with and sue each other beyond the specific terms of the chapter enacted, N.J.S.A. 37:2-1 et seq. The words except as heretofore indicate an intent to leave existing common law rules undisturbed rather than to incorporate each rule into the legislation itself. This is the interpretation reflected in the early decisions. See Hudson v. Gas Consumers' Ass'n, 123 N.J.L. 252, 253 (E & A 1939); Freitag v. Bersano, 123 N.J. Eq. 515, 516-517 (Ch. 1938); Drum v. Drum, 69 N.J.L. 557, 558 (Sup.Ct. 1903). This view accords with the setting in which the provision was enacted. It was passed in 1874 as part of An Act to Amend the Law Relating to the Property of Married Women, Rev.Stat. 1874, [5] p. 468 (approved March 27, 1874) (Married Women's Act). That act consolidated several prior statutes on the same subject. See L. 1852, c. 171 (p. 407); L. 1857, c. 189 (p. 485); L. 1864, c. 396 (p. 698); L. 1868, c. 337 (p. 782); L. 1873, c. 444 (p. 108). It also provided for the first time that the wages and earnings of a married woman acquired in any employment which she carries on separately from her husband were her sole and separate property. This abrogated the common law rule that a husband was entitled to his wife's earnings. See Turner v. Davenport, 63 N.J. Eq. 288 (E & A 1901). The act further provided that a married woman could sue and be sued in her own name, without joining her husband, thereby repealing L. 1862, c. 146 (p. 271), and L. 1867, c. 444 (p. 959), which had required joinder. A married woman was also given the right to contract in her own name apart from her husband. The Married Women's Act thus accomplished sweeping reforms on behalf of married women. See Wilson v. Herbert, 41 N.J.L. 454 (Sup.Ct. 1879). It is therefore not surprising that the Legislature included limiting language, now N.J.S.A. 37:2-5, to ensure that the act would not be construed to override prior law in the absence of an express provision. [6] The Bendler Court's construction of N.J.S.A. 37:2-5 as a legislative incorporation of the common law was followed in Koplik v. C.P. Trucking Corp., 27 N.J. 1 (1958), which involved interspousal immunity from suit. However, later decisions of this Court rejected that interpretation. The trend away from incorporation began in Long v. Landy, 35 N.J. 44 (1961), which permitted suit to be brought by a wife against her husband's estate for injuries she sustained as a passenger in her husband's automobile. The Court concluded that R.S. 37:2-5 serve[d] solely to incapacitate or disable a wife from suing her tortfeasor mate during the existence of the reasons which underlie the common law doctrine [of interspousal immunity]. 35 N.J. at 50. Finding those reasons to be absent when one spouse was deceased, the Court permitted suit. In Immer v. Risko, 56 N.J. 482 (1970), this Court explained the full import of the approach taken in Landy : We would, of course, not have the option of examining the reasons behind the rule or even whether the reasons should apply to a particular case if the immunity were mandated by statute.    In other words, the statute did not incorporate immunity but rather the common law with its inherent capacity for change. [ Id. at 487] This view of the relationship between N.J.S.A. 37:2-5 and the common law was recently reaffirmed in Merenoff v. Merenoff, 76 N.J. 535 (1978). Justice Handler there observed that the statute touched only obliquely the common law or nonstatutory capacity of spouses to sue each other.    [It] did not constitute a statutory ratification or perpetuation of the substantive, common law immunity doctrine. Id. at 548. This interpretation of the statute  that it did not incorporate fixed doctrine formerly a part of the common law  comports with both the language and the context of the provision. Although we have not yet rejected the incorporation theory in a case involving contractual capacity, we can conceive of no reason for imputing to the Legislature two inconsistent intentions embodied in statutory language simply because it addresses two areas of law. We conclude that N.J.S.A. 37:2-5 does not establish a substantive rule of law on the capacity of spouses to contract with one another. Our analysis must therefore focus on the common law rule. B