Court Opinion

ID: 9610256
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 03:39:00.164013+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:02:57.944957
License: Public Domain

BENCH, Judge
(concurring in part, dissenting in part):
I agree with the majority opinion’s treatment of the “tax considerations.” I also agree that this case must be remanded for entry of appropriate findings as to the needs of defendant for alimony and the ability of plaintiff to pay alimony. I respectfully disagree with the majority, however, as to how the parties’ standard of living during the marriage impacts the alimony computations. The majority rules, as a matter of law, that in computing the alimony award, the trial court should have considered a hypothetical standard of living as if the parties were living together at the time of trial rather than their actual standard of living enjoyed prior to separation.1
There are no cases addressing when the parties’ standard or living is determined because a “standard of living” cannot, as the majority implies, be quantified by the trial court. It is not like marital property which is capable of objective valuation at a given time. Nor is it capable of being calculated based on set figures of income as are child support payments. Determining the parties’ standard of living during marriage is a fact-sensitive, subjective task that requires a trial court to look at the totality of the parties’ financial circumstances during the marriage. The Utah Supreme Court has therefore established objective factors that must be considered by the trial court when it determines an award of alimony.
“The most important function of alimony is to provide support for the wife as nearly as possible at the standard of living she enjoyed during marriage, and to prevent the wife from becoming a public charge.” English v. English, 565 P.2d [409] at 411. [(Utah 1977) ] With this purpose in mind, the Court in English articulated three factors that must be considered in fixing a reasonable alimony award:
[1] the financial condition and needs of the wife;
[2] the ability of the wife to produce a sufficient income for herself; and
[3] the ability of the husband to provide support.
Jones v. Jones, 700 P.2d 1072, 1075 (Utah 1985). Accord Paffel v. Paffel, 732 P.2d 96, 100-01 (Utah 1986) (failure to consider these factors is an abuse of discretion); Olson v. Olson, 704 P.2d 564, 566-67 (Utah 1985) (an appellate court will not disturb a trial court’s ruling if these factors are adequately addressed).
As is apparent from the foregoing quotation, the receiving spouse’s previous standard of living is not an independent factor to be quantified and incorporated into a formula for calculating alimony. Rather, it is a frame of reference for determining the reasonableness of the alimony award. See generally, 2 H. Clark, Jr., The Law Of Domestic Relations In The United States § 17.5(8) (2d ed. 1987). In the present case, *1215we are not concerned with the risk of defendant becoming a public charge given the apparent ability of plaintiff to cover defendant’s basic needs. The question is how much additional support above defendant’s basic needs should be granted. The parties’ standard of living prior to separation helps to establish what would be reasonable by showing the lifestyle to which the parties have grown accustomed.
Defendant seeks to benefit from plaintiff’s raise by mistakenly, and unnecessarily, claiming that the raise entitled her to alimony based upon a hypothetical standard of living to be calculated from plaintiff’s new annual salary of $120,000, an income to which she has never grown accustomed.2 In other words, defendant claims that her relevant standard of living is the unknown standard of living that she might have enjoyed were the parties not terminating their marriage. Since any attempt to determine a standard of living for two separated parties as if they were not separated would be purely speculative, the majority’s ruling is judicially unworkable. There is no rational way of knowing how the parties might have utilized the increased income had they remained together. Would they have bought a new car, a new house, or maybe a vacation timeshare? Or would they have simply saved the money for retirement? Since a couple’s standard of living is determined in large part by how they spend their resources, a trial court could do nothing but speculate about the possible standard of living if the marital relationship had continued beyond separation.
Not only is such an approach unworkable, it is not needed if the traditional approach outlined in English is followed. In the present case, the trial court clearly failed to determine defendant’s financial condition and needs based on the expenses she claimed to be necessary to maintain the standard of living she enjoyed during the marriage. See, e.g., Olson, 704 P.2d at 567 (“to maintain the standard of living enjoyed during the marriage, the living expenses of the wife and minor children would be $4,200 per month”).
Defendant presented to the trial court evidence of the expenses which she claimed would be necessary to maintain her standard of living, but the trial court made no findings thereon.3 The trial court should have reviewed the expenses claimed and determined which expenses could be deemed reasonable in light of the standard of living she had enjoyed prior to the separation. See, e.g., Jones, 700 P.2d at 1075 (the couple had enjoyed a “very comfortable lifestyle,” alimony award of $1,000 per month was insufficient for wife to “maintain anything even approaching the standard of living she enjoyed during the marriage”). Her reasonable expenses should have then been offset by her own resources, i.e., any investment income and her own wage-earning capacity. Only then could the trial court have made a finding as to defendant’s needs.
The trial court should have then gone through the same analysis as to the plaintiff’s needs and resources in order to determine his ability to pay. Again, the reasonableness of his claimed expenses should be reviewed with the parties’ prior standard of living in mind. The trial court should have then determined whether plaintiff’s resources exceeded his reasonable needs. At this point the trial court should have, and in fact did, consider the impact of the dramatic increase in plaintiff’s income. If *1216plaintiff had not received the raise, then his ability to pay would be approximately $4,500 less per month, in which case neither party would likely be able to enjoy a standard of living anywhere near their previous standard. Inasmuch as plaintiffs raise has increased his ability to pay, defendant will be directly benefitted without resort to a hypothetical standard of living to which she had not grown accustomed.
After determining what resources were available to the parties to meet their own reasonable expenses, the trial court should have considered any imbalance in the prospective standards of living if the parties were left to support themselves with their own resources. If it were apparent that defendant could not maintain her previous standard of living with her own resources, and that the plaintiff with his dramatically increased income could maintain a higher standard of living, then the trial court could have awarded alimony to raise the standard of living of the defendant. Davis v. Davis, 749 P.2d 647, 649 (Utah 1988) (“the ultimate test of the propriety of an alimony award is whether, given all of these factors, the party receiving alimony will be unable to support him- or herself ‘as nearly as possible at the standard of living ... enjoyed during the marriage,’ ” quoting English, 565 P.2d at 411).4
Inasmuch as the trial court failed to follow the foregoing approach, the court abused its discretion in making the alimony award. I therefore concur with the majority that this case must be remanded to allow the trial court to properly consider the established factors and make appropriate findings. However, since plaintiffs raise will be fully considered when his ability to pay alimony is determined, I believe there is no need to depart from the established criteria for determining alimony. The parties’ standard of living need not, and should not, be extrapolated so as to include speculations about what their standard of living might have been at the time of trial if they had not separated. I therefore respectfully dissent from the majority opinion’s legal ruling on that point.

. Contrary to the majority’s assertion, the trial court did not "pinpoint" the parties’ standard of living as of the time of separation. The trial court took the parties’ average income over a five-year period prior to separation and assumed that their average income was their "standard of living.” While it is clear that the trial court erred in assuming that income alone establishes a standard of living, it may not be said that it made the mistake of pinpointing that standard of living. The majority therefore errs in finding that the trial court abused its discretion when the trial court did not even make the mistake that the majority is accusing it of making.

. Defendant claims, and the majority seems to agree, that defendant is entitled to a larger amount of alimony because she "persevered during the lean times." Such an argument does not, however, justify an amount in excess of the needs substantiated by the receiving spouse. English, 565 P.2d at 412. The majority’s summary conclusion that the income was "akin to deferred income,” is totally unsupported. While the parties may have perservered at Western Airlines during the lean times, there is no evidence that there was any commitment from Western that plaintiffs income would increase if and because he stayed with the airline.

. Defendant's actual expenses at the time of trial were likely greatly diminished due to her limited income at the time. She therefore correctly sought to present not only her actual expenses during the separation, but also the expenses she claimed would be necessary to maintain or, in many cases return to, the standard of living she enjoyed prior to separation.

. The alimony award, however, need not be large enough to maintain the receiving spouse at the standard of living enjoyed during the marriage if that amount of alimony would lower the standard of living of the paying spouse below that of the receiving spouse. Alimony may only raise the standard of living of the receiving spouse until it is roughly equal to that of the paying spouse. It is in this sense that alimony should seek "to the extent possible, [to] equalize the parties’ respective post-divorce living standards.” Rasband v. Rasband, 752 P.2d 1331, 1333 (Utah Ct.App.1988).