Court Opinion

ID: 9669494
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 02:57:23.976733+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:15:57.264863
License: Public Domain

Sullivan, J.
(dissenting). I dissent.
The majority has found what I perceive to be a distinction without a difference. Certainly as the laborer is worthy of his hire, the attorney is worthy of his fee. The plaintiff paid her attorney, also her cousin, $800. Her attorney now holds in addition the check for $1,500, out of which he wants to satisfy his judgment for fees.
That money comes ultimately from a single source—the support for the child, Landry Roebuck. Whether there exists a charging lien or a retaining lien matters not; the money comes from the same source and it is for the same end. The fact that the $1,500 covers arrearages does not change its nature as support. You can paint stripes on a horse and call it a zebra, but it is still a horse.
Hope Landry was awarded the money for the support of Landry Roebuck. She stands as a trustee of such funds and has no right to distribute them as attorney fees. She could not assign her interest in those funds, Fournier v Clutton, 146 Mich 298; 109 NW 425 (1906), nor could she voluntarily encumber them with a contingent-fee agree*436ment, Welles v Brown, 226 Mich 657; 198 NW 180 (1924).
To charge an attorney’s lien on support arrearages is to cut the heart out of the purpose of Michigan’s policy of child support. See Fournier, supra, p 300.
The majority holds that the attorney may not tap regular support payments, but may tap arrearage payments. The Supreme Court in Washington, in addressing that question in Fuqua v Fuqua, 88 Wash 2d 100, 108; 558 P2d 801 (1977), said:
Appellant has asserted that his liens are valid at least to the extent that they involve back support —with this contention we cannot agree. We see no reason to allow assertion of a lien against support monies which are, after long delay, made available to children who have been deprived of the benefit of adequate support on a regular basis. The fact that such children may have managed to get along, though deprived of adequate support for some time, certainly does not compel the conclusion that those support monies are in any way less important to the welfare of the children involved than they were at the time awarded. Indeed, it is quite likely that the back support would be needed to satisfy indebtedness incurred by the custodian on behalf of the family during the period in which the family was without adequate support.
Fuqua applies to both charging and retaining liens.
I would affirm.