Court Opinion

ID: 9575229
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 21:12:30.091738+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:45:06.394890
License: Public Domain

POPOVICH, Chief Judge
(dissenting).
I respectfully dissent and would affirm the trial court for the following reasons:
1. It would be difficult not to have compassion for Lidia Eichenholz. Her physical history demonstrates a life of challenge and disappointment. In addition, her personal life has been troublesome. Yet, it is not the role of this court to permit hard facts to make bad law.
2. A stipulation produced the original award of maintenance and support in this matter. Both parties were represented by competent counsel. The stipulation served the parties well for the 15 years between 1966 and 1982, until a trial court determined a sufficient change in circumstances warranted an increase in maintenance.
Stipulations regarding maintenance or property settlements are favored and encouraged. As Judge Crippen in his special concurrence notes, such stipulations must be respected and only carefully and reluc*706tantly modified by a court when circumstances have changed substantially. Here, the trial court had ample opportunity to review the circumstances and properly determined a modification was required.
3. The majority does not give proper deference to the trial court’s role and improperly usurps the trial court as finder of fact by conducting an independent review of the evidence. When the trial court has considered all relevant evidence, we must respect its discretion. See Borckert v. Borchert, 391 N.W.2d 74, 75 (Minn.Ct.App.1986). Due deference should be given when the trial court as here has twice considered the evidence; first when initially approving the referee’s decision and second when confirming the order upon later review. When the court’s award rests within the reasonable range of requested modification and is supported by the evidence, we should not find an abuse of discretion.
4. Given this court’s limited standard of review regarding maintenance modification, we should not engage in an independent consideration of the evidence. “The court of appeals’ duty as a reviewing court is not to substitute its own judgment for that of the trial court * * Tonka Tours, Inc. v. Chadima, 372 N.W.2d 723, 727 (Minn.1985). Here, I would defer to the trial court’s unique position as finder of fact and, finding no abuse of the trial court’s discretion, would affirm its upward modification of maintenance.