Court Opinion

ID: 9741974
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 21:04:49.130099+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:24:27.598523
License: Public Domain

Yetka, Justice
(dissenting).
I respectfully dissent. I would affirm the trial court.
At the time of the initial proceeding for a divorce or dissolution of marriage, whether or not the parties agree by stipulation, the court has a duty to act as a third party to represent the interests of the state of Minnesota to see that there be not only a fair and proper provision for child support but also a fair division of property and a proper inquiry into the question of alimony. If the parties have stipulated and agreed that there should be no alimony, the court has not only the power but the duty to set aside such a stipulation and to make a proper provision for alimony if it sees fit, or, in the alternative, to place the case, if originally submitted to it as a default matter, onto the general trial calendar for resolution in an adversary proceeding.
Once the court decides that there shall be no alimony it has decided that the circumstances of the parties at that time do not justify the imposition of alimony. The question then becomes res judicata. Of course, the court can reserve, as it did here, jurisdiction over the question for some future date, but that decision can only logically envision an award of alimony where the circumstances of the parties have drastically changed since the dissolution was granted. Here the trial court found no change in circumstances so it was correct in refusing to award alimony.
There is an additional reason why the trial court was correct in its findings in this case: Courts have in recent years been awarding alimony as a “stopgap” measure only to help one of *304the parties until that party can become self-sufficient. Here the divorce took place in Í971. The motion for alimony was not made until 1975 — some 4 years later. To decide that the question of alimony can be opened up after such a passage of time would defeat the progress already made toward encouraging each of the parties to build a new life and become financially independent of the other.