Court Opinion

ID: 9688376
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 17:44:48.544437+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:18:37.908210
License: Public Domain

HENDERSON, Justice
(dissenting).
Having treated this as a property settlement agreement for years, and the property settlement having run its course, the ex-wife (to obtain alimony payments) now proclaims, in essence, it was alimony from the beginning. This Court continues its paradoxical alimony march, notwithstanding the “liberation of women” and, in effect, holds: “Yes, you parties did not know all along what you were saying for years when you did not call it alimony; and neither did the Internal Revenue Service, who did not treat these periodic payments as alimony.” We have a legal flip-flop here by the ex-wife, for she reverses her position and now claims these periodic payments were alimony when in truth and in fact, she professed to the world therebe-fore, to include the Internal Revenue Service, that they were not. We have before us a type of alimony shell game. First you do not see it, then later you do.
Not one time, in the divorce decree, was the word alimony mentioned. In fact, back in the original divorce proceedings, wife did not even mention alimony in her proposed findings of fact and conclusions of law. Obviously, if alimony was never awarded (and it was not), modification of an alimony award is legally impossible. From my reading of the record, I cannot see where the ex-wife ever requested alimony at the time the original divorce became final. Yet, like a money geyser, it erupts for the first time years subsequent to the original decree. A golden oldie in this Court is Cameron v. Cameron, 31 S.D. 335, 140 N.W. 700 (1913), where the ex-wife sought a modification to obtain permanent alimony but where she was never originally awarded alimony. In Cameron, she stated that she needed the alimony and her husband *48could pay it. In this case, I note that the trial court entered a memorandum decision on June 16, 1987, which it incorporated in its findings of fact. The trial court expressed and recognized that the prime reason for extending the "alimony” was based upon the ex-wife’s economic need. End of a golden oldie? Do we say, as the Japanese do, sayonara to that well-established precedent which I first learned in law school and then kept at my command as a young, fledging lawyer in this state nearly 40 years ago?
This decision violates our holding in Blare v. Blare, 302 N.W.2d 787 (S.D.1981), which has been cited with approval many times in this Court. “In the absence of fraud or other reasons that would apply to any judgment, a divorce decree that divides or allots property or provides for payment of a gross sum in lieu thereof is a final and conclusive adjudication and cannot be subsequently modified.” Id. at 790. This decision also violates our holding in Holt v. Holt, 84 S.D. 671, 674, 176 N.W.2d 51, 53 (1970), which provides that when a gross or lump sum is allowed the wife as alimony, finality attaches, and the fact that the court chooses to make it payable in installments over a fixed period (usually for the benefit of the payor) does not destroy its finality or alter the rule. Holt, id.; see also Blare, 302 N.W.2d at 790. By the authority of Blare and Holt, ex-wife’s argument (another shell game), that the trial court’s reduction of payments by only $106 upon one child’s attaining majority indicates that the payments were both child support and alimony, is futile, because fixed awards like these are immutable.
In reviewing this case, the findings of fact and conclusions of law specify that the parties had very little equity in the home when they were divorced. To increase the equity, the trial court (Judge Christensen) required the ex-husband to continue to make payments on the home. Obviously, this increased the equity in the property. Ex-wife was allowed 70% interest, as a division of property, in the equity. No change in the time element, as to when she was to receive these benefits, was entered when it increased from a 50% equity to a 70% equity. Therefore, it was the court’s intent to have these payments treated as periodic property payments to increase the equity. Perforce, those payments are not subject to modification. Holt, 176 N.W.2d at 53. There simply is no jurisdiction for the trial court to consider modification. For the trial court to determine that these periodic payments were alimony is judicial error.
Another gross misconception by the trial court and the majority opinion is portrayed by the following analysis. This house payment, the trial court held, was to be legally terminated upon the ex-wife’s death or marriage; therefore, the trial court reasoned that this was alimony. However, this can be pierced by reading the findings of fact and conclusions of law which do not lend any credence to a determination that the payments ended when the ex-wife either died or remarried. See 1981 Conclusion of Law No. 5 for the exact words supporting my statement. Rather, the payments were to end only upon the occurrence of two in future circumstances, namely: (1) When the parties’ youngest child either reached the age of 18; or (2) said youngest child finished high school, whichever occurrence was the later event. Only the death or remarriage of the ex-wife changed, or could change, her ability to remain in the home prior to the occurrence of those two events. It is evident that her right to remain in the home differed from her right to receive continued payments. Such a distinction was clearly identified in the original findings of fact and conclusions of law.
In conclusion, I wish to express that this is not a complex case. The decree awarded property in lieu of alimony. Ex-wife never treated the payments as alimony for tax purposes, nor did the ex-husband, nor did the Internal Revenue Service, notwithstanding the availability of such treatment. These payments, by the ex-husband unto the ex-wife, had the same characteristics as the payments in Blare, except that in the Blare decision they were specifically identified as being, in part, an amount of alimony. When ex-wife realized the payments *49would stop, she whirled and took an entirely new legal position. Fortunately for her, and unfortunately for her ex-husband, the shell game has worked and the geyser bubbles up with that monetary elixir we legally dub “alimony.”