Court Opinion

ID: 9712664
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 04:58:12.165911+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:23:13.641066
License: Public Domain

Dissenting Opinion
DeBruler, J.
This petition for writ of mandate and prohibition brings here for review a judgment and order of confinement for indirect contempt of court by which the trial court sought to enforce a provision of an earlier final dissolution of marriage decree requiring petitioner to pay his former wife $35,000 in installments. The petition presents the issue of whether that part of the order placing petitioner in confinement is contrary to the guarantee of Article I, Section 22, of the Indiana Constitution, that there shall be no imprisonment for debt. I do not ascribe to the majority view that this order of confinement falls within the proscription of that constitutional provision and therefore dissent. The order requiring appellant to pay his former wife this sum was in lieu of requiring petitioner to sell his business and pay her $35,000 from the proceeds of such sale. As such it was the full legal equivalent of an order requiring petitioner to deliver existing property having a value of $35,000 to his former wife as a division of property, and as such it is enforcible by exercise of the court’s contempt powers. State ex rel. Schutz v. Marion Superior Court, Room No. 7, (1974) 261 Ind. 535, 307 N.E.2d 53.
The temporary writ should be dissolved.
Arterburn, J., concurs.
Note. — Reported at 362 N.E.2d 153.