Opinion ID: 2049657
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Post-Judgment Interest on Unpaid Alimony

Text: The January 4, 1980, divorce judgment provides: It is further ordered that LAURIER T. RAYMOND, JR. pay to CONSTANCE L. RAYMOND ... One Thousand one hundred fifty and 00/100 dollars ($1,150.00 [per month] as alimony toward the support of CONSTANCE L. RAYMOND. Said periodic payments shall continue for five (5) years from January 1, 1980, but shall terminate on the death of CONSTANCE RAYMOND, should that first occur.... It is further ORDERED that the amount of alimony for CONSTANCE L. RAYMOND'S separate support and maintenance shall not be increased or decreased. From May 1, 1981, until we affirmed the denial of his motion to suspend in July of 1982, see Raymond I, the husband failed to make the $1,150.00 monthly alimony payments as they came due under the judgment. In its May 27, 1983, order, the Superior Court awarded the wife interest on the overdue alimony payments, holding that the interest statute which provides for post-judgment interest on sums due but not paid applies to the delinquent payments in the case. 14 M.R.S.A. § 1602. On appeal the husband does not contest the amount of post-judgment interest awarded, [4] but does argue that the Superior Court lacked any authority at all to award post-judgment interest on the installments commencing on their respective due dates. The Superior Court's authority to award the wife interest on the withheld alimony payments must exist, if at all, by virtue of an enabling statute. See Batchelder v. Tweedie, 294 A.2d 443 (Me.1972); Cary v. Whitney, 50 Me. 337, 338 (1863); Kendall v. Lewiston Water Power Co., 36 Me. 19, 22 (1853). The version of 14 M.R. S.A. § 1602 in effect at the time the Raymond divorce action was commenced, provided in pertinent part: In all civil actions ... [f]rom and after the date of entry of an order for judgment, including the period of pendency of an appeal, interest shall be allowed at the rate of 10% per year. 14 M.R.S.A. § 1602 (1980). [5] The applicability of section 1602 to the case at bar turns on whether a divorce case is a civil action and whether a judgment of divorce, including its orders for the payment of money, is an order for judgment within the meaning of that statute. We are convinced that the statute does apply by its plain terms and therefore affirm the Superior Court's award of post-judgment interest. Post-judgment interest in all civil actions was first provided by a complete revision of section 1602 in 1969. See P.L. 1969, ch. 397, § 1 (repealing and replacing 14 M.R.S.A. § 1602). The meaning of the terms judgment and civil actions as used in the 1969 amendment must be assessed in reference to the common meaning of those terms at the time of the 1969 amendment was enacted. See Town of Arundel v. Swain, 374 A.2d 317, 320 (Me. 1977) (statutory terms are to be construed according to their natural import in common and approved usage); see also State v. Snow, 383 A.2d 1385, 1388 (Me.1978). The reference point for the meaning of both civil action and judgment was in 1969, as it is today, the Maine Rules of Civil Procedure. Rule 2 as originally promulgated to be effective December 1, 1959, and as it still appears, provides: There shall be one form of action to be known as civil action. Since December 1, 1959, Rule 81(a) has provided: A civil action under these rules is appropriate whether the suit is cognizable at law or in equity and irrespective of any statutory provision as to the form of action. Rule 80, dealing explicitly with divorce actions, has from the beginning acknowledged the civil nature of divorce cases. [6] It provides, as it has since its promulgation: These Rules of Civil Procedure shall apply to actions for divorce, except as otherwise provided in this rule. Rule 80 contains no language exempting divorce proceedings from the pronouncements of Rules 2 and 81(a) that only a single form of action, known as a civil action, survives the 1959 adoption of the modern rules of procedure. With respect to the term judgment, Rule 54(a) provides: Judgment as used in these rules includes a decree and any order from which an appeal lies. This language plainly encompasses judgments for divorce. Rule 80 itself refers to the term judgment in connection with the disposition of divorce proceedings. Thus, at the time of enactment of the 1969 revision of section 1602, the terms civil action and judgment had acquired clearly defined meanings by which civil action encompassed a divorce proceeding and judgment, an alimony decree. The legislature's awareness of the nomenclature of the rules is plainly evidenced by its repeated efforts to modernize statutes on the books to conform to the language of the rules. In 1959 and again in 1961, major legislation was enacted repealing all statutory references to obsolete forms of action, pleadings, and other terminology, and replacing them with language consistent with the single form of civil action created by the Maine Rules of Civil Procedure. See P.L.1959, ch. 317; P.L.1961, ch. 317. Both the 1959 act and the 1961 act made changes in the statutes pertaining to divorce so as to bring those statutes into conformity with the then new civil rules. See P.L. 1959, ch. 317, §§ 297-301; P.L.1961, ch. 317, §§ 553-557. See also Memorandum to the Judiciary Committee Prepared by Richard H. Field reproduced in Field & McKusick, Maine Civil Practice 652-72 (1st ed. 1959). It was against this statutory and rulemaking background that in 1969 the legislature provided for the first time for post-judgment interest in all civil actions. [7] The Superior Court's interpretation of section 1602 is the correct one. The Raymond divorce judgment, including its alimony provision, was a judgment entered in a civil action, and the husband withheld payments due under that judgment at his peril. Section 1602 makes no exceptions to the rule that post-judgment interest must be paid in any civil action, [8] and we can divine no policy considerations that would have led the legislature to treat an alimony obligor under a court order any differently than any other judgment debtor. We are here concerned with a money judgment that calls for installment payments as alimony. A divorce judgment equally well might call for one spouse to pay a lump sum to the other as, for example, a payment in lieu of alimony or one to carry out a division of marital property. By the unrestricted language of section 1602, as well as by any reasoned principle, either a lump sum or installment money judgment, including one entered in connection with dissolving a marriage, should carry post-judgment interest. We cannot read the legislature's enactment in 1979 of the Alimony and Support Enforcement Act, 19 M.R.S.A. § 771 et seq. (1981), as a repeal by implication of the preexisting right of a judgment creditor on a money judgment in a divorce action to enforce it by execution and other existing means, with post-judgment interest being awarded as a matter of course. Note, in this connection, that ever since the enactment of P.L.1959, ch. 317, § 298, a part of the omnibus bill revising all the Maine statutes to conform to the then new Rules of Civil Procedure, use of attachment of real and personal property or on trustee process has been authorized in divorce actions. See 19 M.R.S.A. § 692 (1981). The Alimony and Support Enforcement Act, which applies to a wide variety of orders for the payment of alimony or support and for payment of related costs and counsel fees, id., § 771, contemplates that the payee will get a second judgment and thereafter can enforce that new judgment by a variety of means. See id., § 774. The remedies of the 1979 act are cumulative, rather than substitutional, to those previously available by statute and rule. In other jurisdictions, it is the nearly universal rule that a general statute providing interest on money judgments applies to alimony payments, whether in lump sum or installments, after they have become due. See, e.g., In re Marriage of Hoffee, 60 Cal.App.3d 337, 131 Cal.Rptr. 637 (1976); Strand v. Despain, 79 Idaho 304, 316 P.2d 262 (1957); Rubisoff v. Rubisoff, 242 Miss. 225, 133 So.2d 534 (1961); Scott v. Scott, 19 Utah 2d 267, 430 P.2d 580 (1967); Roberts v. Roberts, 69 Wash.2d 863, 420 P.2d 864 (1966). See also 24 Am. Jur.2d Divorce and Separation § 763 (1983). [9] To hold otherwise would allow the obligor to profit by a deliberate disregard of the court's judgment. It would be contrary to public policy to erect such an obvious disincentive to a divorced party's timely discharge of his decretal obligation to his former spouse. The Superior Court properly awarded interest on the unpaid alimony that from time to time became overdue by the terms of the January 4, 1980, judgment.