Court Opinion

ID: 9687030
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 16:14:05.028813+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:18:23.788463
License: Public Domain

VOGEL, Justice,
dissenting.
I dissent, for reasons stated in Haugeberg v. Haugeberg, 258 N.W.2d 657 (N.D.1977). Without repeating what I said there, I would like to point out what the Court is doing in this case.
Without saying that it is considering the relative fault of the parties, the majority opinion seems to blame the wife for the separation, which occurred in 1973. The cause of this separation may be the wife’s drinking, or it may be the husband’s brutality and indifference to her. I cannot say which is cause and which is effect, or whether causes and effects are mixed.
At the time of the separation, the husband’s income was $46,000 per year. At the time of trial, his admitted net worth was either $325,000 or $482,000, depending upon which of his admissions is taken to be accurate.
As a reward for 15 years of marriage and raising five children, and helping accumulate about one-third of a million dollars of marital estate, the wife is to be given only an undivided half-interest in one quarter of land worth perhaps $24,000 [as the husband testified, the average value of all the land was $300 per acre], a half-interest in a certificate of deposit for $2,304.58, $600 per month alimony, and payment of her medical bills!
Of course, if she dies first, her heirs will lose all interest in the jointly owned property and the alimony will end. If he dies first, the alimony and the payment of medical expenses will end, and she will get the jointly owned quarter-section and certificate of deposit.
During the time they are both alive, she will get $600 per month, which is approximately 10 percent of his average income for the years 1973-1975, or, otherwise stated, the amount which could be earned at six percent on an investment of $120,000, with ownership of the principal remaining in him. An annuity, of course, would cost less.
To describe this as “equitable” is to give that word a new meaning.
If Mrs. Haberstroh is a sick woman, she should not be penalized. If she cannot handle money, some sort of trust or guardianship arrangement should be devised. But to give one spouse, from a marital estate of about a third of a million dollars, a few *675trifling assets and an income at the poverty level, is not equitable.
I would divide the property so that she receives at least half, and require her to pay her own medical bills. For my reasons for preferring property division * to alimony, and for considering the value of the services of a housewife as equal to that of a wage-earner, see dissent in Haugeberg v. Hauge-berg, supra.

 Either by outright division or by giving her notes secured by a lien on specific property.