Court Opinion

ID: 9721352
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 08:57:12.063783+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:24:25.114037
License: Public Domain

PARAS, J.
I concur in the decision and substantially in the reasoning of Justice Friedman; my sole disagreement is with the dictum contained in his next to last paragraph.
*536I recognize no “developing social attitude” which should portend the enunciation of a public policy inimical to the Vallera-Keene doctrine. Alone out of the seven Keene participants, Justice Peters mistakenly saw the doctrine as discriminating in favor of the male gender (Keene v. Keene (1962) 57 Cal.2d 657, 668 [21 Cal.Rptr. 593, 371 P.2d 329]); the other six recognized the reality that it favors neither sex, but extends its touch equally to both. Indeed the majority opinion expressly notes cases applying the rule to circumstantially similar claims by men to a share of earnings or accumulations of women (Id. at p. 662, fn. 2). Thus the modern trend toward increased awareness of the equality of the sexes surely furnishes no basis for altering the Vallera-Keene doctrine. On the contrary, it fortifies it.
The doctrine was spawned by concepts of morality, not chauvinism. By protecting one’s actual contribution to the other’s nominal property and by recognizing agreements to share, both express and implied (id., p. 662), the doctrine does substantial equity to the nonworking participant. But it stops there. It declares that one party to a meretricious relationship does not thereby automatically become entitled to a share of the other’s earnings and accumulations, solely because of the relationship. It thus discourages meretricious relations and promotes a public policy favoring legally binding marriages, with consequent sounder and more secure familial ties.
This public policy has not changed and should not change. There is no social attitude, nor any “responsive array of statutory and decisional developments,” which prefers informal living arrangements to solemnized marriage, nor any reason for us to suggest one. The fact that historically many couples have chosen to live together meretriciously, and that many do so now, hardly endows the practice with the dignity of a “developing social attitude.”
In short I offer no apology for our adherence to the Vallera-Keene rule, which I consider wise and sound; I disavow the dictum to the contrary.