Court Opinion

ID: 9687741
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 16:45:27.612726+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:18:30.862912
License: Public Domain

ROSS, Judge
(concurring in part, dissenting in part).
I respectfully dissent from the court’s primary holding. The majority would require all retiring spousal maintenance obli-gors to disprove a suspicion that we know does not exist. Why would a spousal maintenance obligor’s decision to retire at a customary retirement age require him to disprove that the decision is in bad faith when the decision “weighs strongly in fa*721vor of a finding of good faith”? I think the majority’s holding today mistakenly extends precedent.
I agree with the majority that a spousal maintenance obligor’s retirement “at a normal or customary retirement age weighs strongly in favor of a finding of good-faith retirement.” Supra at 720. And I agree that “when an obligor retires at an ordinary or customary retirement age” a policy presuming good faith in the retirement decision “has merit.” Supra at 718. I think these are undeniable principles that underlie spousal maintenance caselaw. I therefore disagree that we should plot a different course to require obligors who retire in the normal timing of things to justify their ordinary retirement decision in the same way that precedent requires early retiring obligors to disprove bad faith.
The court today remands with instructions to require Daniel Hemmingsen to prove he retired in good faith if Claudia Hemmingsen is deemed to have presented a “colorable claim” of bad faith. But in my view, Mr. Hemmingsen’s age itself is a sufficient response to Ms. Hemmingsen’s accusation about his motive, and it should be her burden to prove bad faith to reply to the compelling fact that retirement occurred in the ordinary timing of things. As it stands, the court’s holding today may be construed as requiring district courts to presume bad faith when a spousal maintenance obligor retires at a customary retirement age merely upon some superficial “colorable” accusation.
Although our caselaw imposes on the early retiring obligor a burden to disprove bad faith, it has never demanded or implied that a similar burden follows the ordinarily retiring obligor. In Giesner v. Giesner, 319 N.W.2d 718, 719-20 (Minn. 1982), the district court refused to reduce an out-of-work obligor’s spousal maintenance obligation when the obligor voluntarily depleted his assets by trying to start a business after losing his job. The supreme court remanded the case and required the district court to consider the obligor’s subjective motive for the decision, reasoning that an income-restricting employment decision should not prevent a reduction in his maintenance obligation unless he made the decision with the intent to undercut his obligation by rendering himself unable to pay. Id.
In In re Marriage of Richards, we extended Giesner to an obligor’s voluntary decision to retire early. 472 N.W.2d 162, 165 (Minn.App.1991). We held that when a spousal maintenance obligee raises a “colorable claim” that retirement is the result of bad faith, “an obligor must show by a preponderance of the evidence that a decision to retire early was not primarily influenced by a specific intent to decrease or terminate maintenance.” Id. (emphasis added). We did not expressly explain what constitutes a “colorable claim,” but one must infer from our reasoning in Richards that accusing an obligor of seeking a maintenance reduction after retiring early, without more, constitutes a “colorable claim” of bad faith. Our holding clarified that the early retiring maintenance obligor who faces a claim of bad faith consequently has the burden to disprove that his retirement was intended to eliminate his obligation. So once the claim of bad faith is made in the context of early retirement, an implied presumption of bad faith exists and a finding of changed circumstances requires the obligor to disprove bad faith. Id.
But I see no basis to extend the Richards bad-faith presumption in early retirement cases to ordinary retirement cases. Unlike in Richards, where “we perceive[d] no reason why Giesner should not apply” to early retirement, id., there is an obvious *722reason not to treat the ordinarily retiring obligor in the same fashion as the early retiring obligor. Ordinary retirement is an expected event in the life of a worker. Early retirement is not. So early retirement is suspicious, and ordinary retirement is not. We expect divorced workers to follow the same personal economic incentives that motivated them during the marriage, and when they do not, we recognize that they must be moved by some other incentive. In the case of the early retiring spousal maintenance obligor, one strongly suspects that the other incentive is to avoid paying maintenance, and Richards directs district courts to respond by loading the obligor with the burden to overcome the suspicion. That the Richards court used the term “early retirement” rather than merely “retirement” demonstrates that we recognized early retirement as an unusual class of retirements warranting special scrutiny. But because retirement at an ordinary age carries no similar inherent suspicion, we have no basis to treat ordinarily retiring obligors the same way.
The majority seems to agree that the distinction between early and ordinary retirement is significant, but it indicates that without policy-driven legislation we are compelled to extend Richards to ordinary retirement eases. I do not agree. In the 27 years since Giesner and the 18 years since Richards, no Minnesota court has held that the obligor who retires on an expected schedule carries the burden to overcome a presumption of bad faith. I believe that by extending Richards, we upset the current approach, which appears to be to treat proof of retirement at the customary age as prima facie evidence of good faith.
I would expressly hold that retirement at the customary age is prima facie evidence that the retirement occurred in good faith. This seems implicit in the 27-year silence in our caselaw and explicit in at least one unpublished opinion, which I find persuasive. See Dynamic Air, Inc. v. Bloch, 502 N.W.2d 796, 800 (Minn.App. 1993) (recognizing that unpublished decisions may be referred to for their persuasive quality). In what appears to be the only case on point, we reasoned that proof that an obligor’s retirement occurred at a customary retirement age can alone establish that the retirement occurred in good faith. In Buscher v. Buscher, we reasoned that an ailing spousal maintenance obli-gor’s retirement at age 68 alone established that the retirement occurred in good faith. No. CX-02-130, 2002 WL 1751087, at *3 (Minn.App. July 30, 2002), review denied (Minn. Oct. 15, 2002). It is true that in Buscher we considered the obli-gor’s health difficulties as factors worthy of consideration among others that were discussed in Richards. But we did not require the obligor to introduce any evidence other than his age or to offer more argument. Instead, we declared the analysis of the obligor’s health to be unnecessary: “Even without his health problems, however, appellant’s age alone supports good-faith retirement.” Id. (emphasis added).
I would hold again in this published opinion that retirement at the customary “age alone” establishes that the retirement occurred in good faith with no additional showing necessary. Whether we treat that proof of customary retirement as the obligor’s response to a “colorable claim” of bad faith, or we treat customary retirement as a fact that “weighs strongly in favor of a finding of good faith,” the practical result is the same: once we know that the obligor’s retirement occurred during the customary period, the burden then falls to the obligee to overcome the appearance of validity.
*723In other words, applying the majority’s unassailable premise that a spousal maintenance obligor’s decision to retire at a customary retirement age “weighs strongly in favor of a finding of good faith,” I would hold that Daniel Hemmingsen’s ordinary retirement decision is presumptively legitimately motivated. On our facts, even if Claudia Hemmingsen provides some argument or evidence amounting to a “colorable claim” of bad faith, Daniel Hem-mingsen should be entitled to a reduction in his spousal maintenance obligation commensurate to the resulting substantial change in circumstances unless Claudia Hemmingsen has introduced evidence sufficient to overcome the presumption of good faith. I concur in the decision to remand because I believe that the district court failed to “ma[k]e ... findings to assist us in conducting a meaningful review of why it found that [Claudia Hem-mingsen] raised a colorable claim of bad faith” and why it found that Daniel Hem-mingsen’s presumptively good-faith decision to retire at age 65 was actually motivated by bad faith.