Court Opinion

ID: 9529588
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 03:52:14.195722+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:27:51.044727
License: Public Domain

DISSENTING OPINION OF WAKATSUKI, J.
I respectfully dissent.
Although the majority’s construction of HRS § 580-56(d) fits with the grammatical structure of the provision, the legislative history clearly indicates that the “dower or curtesy” limitation in HRS § 580-56(d) applies to both the “former spouse’s real estate” and the “former spouse’s personal estate.”
The one-year cut-off provision was first introduced in the 1973 amendment to Rev. Laws Haw. § 324-45 (1955), the predecessor of HRS § 580-56(d). Section § 324-45 was entitled “Forfeiture of dower” and read:
A wife divorced shall not be entitled to dower in her husband’s real estate, or any part thereof, nor to any share of his personal estate.
In 1973, the provision was amended to its present form and the bill’s standing committee reports stated:
The purpose of this bill is to establish rights of divorced persons to dower and curtesy in their former spouse’s estates when the divorce decree does not finally divide the property of the parties.
.. .The divisible divorce, that is where the marriage is dissolved but the other rights of the parties have not been adjudicated, is quite common. Under present law, in the event one party to that divorce were to die before the division of the *7property was completed, intervening rights of a new spouse could have attached. This hiatus should be eliminated by statutory enactment.
The proposed language reserves to a former spouse rights to dower and curtesy presently granted by Hawaii Revised Statutes until the entry of a Decree which finally divides the property of the parties to the former marriage. . . .
.. . The bill clearly indicates that this right to dower or curtesy will extend only for a period of one year of the entry of a decree or order reserving the final division of property.
Sen. Stand. Comm. Rep. No. 852, in 1973 Senate Journal, at 967-68; see Hse. Stand. Comm. Rep. No. 618, in 1973 House Journal, at 1045.
It is clear, therefore, that the 1973 amendment was directed only at preserving dower and curtesy rights in the former spouse prior to property division, and that the one-year period was intended as an outside time limit on those dower and curtesy rights only. The time limit was not intended to prevent the former spouse from gaining a share of the other spouse’s property in a subsequent division of property. The fact that the title of the pre-1973 statute is “Forfeiture of dower” lends further support to this view.
The majority’s application of the “dower or curtesy” phrase to only real estate and not personal estate means that under the pre1973 statute a wife could not share in any of her husband’s property after a divorce decree was entered. In other words, the majority’s construction would make property division after the dissolution of the marriage impossible.
Therefore, the one-year cut-off should apply only to dower and curtesy rights in the real and personal estate of the former spouse. Because neither dower nor curtesy is involved here, the lower court improperly dismissed the case.
I would reverse and remand.