Court Opinion

ID: 9622521
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 06:19:19.318035+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:27:06.795679
License: Public Domain

KELLER, Justice,
concurring.
I concur in the majority opinion’s holding, but write separately because I believe that, instead of merely distinguishing “the elephant in the room,” Dame v. Dame,1 this Court should take this opportunity to overrule it.
In Dame, this Court held that although open-end maintenance awards may be modified under KRS 403.250 on the basis of a change in circumstances, lump-sum maintenance awards are not subject to modification. A lump-sum award is a fixed and determinable amount and payable either in one lump-sum payment or in installments.2 In the present case, maintenance is payable in a determinative amount, i.e., “until the fifth day of the month of Respondent’s 62nd birthday,” and, thus, is properly characterized as lump-sum maintenance.
In John v. John,3 the separation agreement provided for the husband to pay the wife as maintenance “the total sum of $1,320,000” in installment payments over a ten-year period. The agreement, however, did not contain a provision for termination of the husband’s maintenance payments upon the wife’s remarriage. The wife remarried before the expiration of the ten-year period, and the husband sought to terminate his maintenance obligation under the separation agreement. The Court of Appeals found Dame controlling precedent4 and held that the husband had agreed to pay lump-sum maintenance, which is not modifiable. Accordingly, the Court of Appeals determined, under the aegis of Dame, that the wife’s remarriage did not terminate maintenance.
*575The majority overrules John, and I agree that John should be overruled. However, because Dame is the linchpin of John, I would also overrule Dame or at least sound its death knell louder than the majority does. I acknowledge that Dame, strictly speaking, construed subsection (1) of KRS 403.250, which deals with modification of maintenance upon a showing of “changed circumstances,” and that John involved subsection (2), which provides for termination of maintenance upon death or remarriage. But, while the John Court may have broadened Dame’s holding somewhat, John’s holding hardly “came out of left field”; it simply relied upon Dame’s conclusion that lump-sum maintenance awards should be treated differently from open-ended maintenance awards in that lump-sum maintenance awards should be construed as final and unalterable.5
The broader issue addressed in Dame, and the issue that I believe this Court should address again in this opinion today, was whether the legislature “in enacting KRS 403.250 intend[ed] to extend the jurisdiction of the circuit court so as to permit it to amend or modify a lump sum award of maintenance as well as an open-end award?”6 In my opinion, this Court answered the question incorrectly in Dame, and we need not and should not wait another twenty-two (22) years for another case to provide the correct answer and overrule Dame; I would do so now for the benefit of the trial bench and the practicing bar.
GRAVES, J., joins this concurring opinion.

. Ky., 628 S.W.2d 625 (1982).

. Id. at 627 (" 'Hence, we conclude that where, as here, maintenance is in a fixed and determinable amount to be paid either in a lump sum or is for a specific amount to be paid over a definite term, unless the power to do so is expressly reserved by the court, it is alimony in gross and has the finality of a judgment, and thus, is not subject to modification on the basis of a change in circumstances ....’”) (quoting In Re Marriage of Gallegos, 41 Colo.App. 116, 580 P.2d 838, 840 (1978), overruled by Sinn v. Sinn, 696 P.2d 333, 335 (Colo.1985)); 15 L. GRAHAM & J. KELLER, KENTUCKY PRACTICE, DOMESTIC RELATIONS LAW § 16.21 (2nd ed. West Group 1997) ("An award may be characterized as lump sum even though it is payable in installments. A lump sum award must involve a fixed and determinable amount.”); BLACK’S LAW DICTIONARY 73 (7th ed.1999) ("alimony in gross. Alimony in the form of a single and definite sum not subject to modification. — Also termed lump-sum alimony.").

. Ky.App., 893 S.W.2d 373 (1995)

. John, 893 S.W.2d at 375 ("However, we believe the Dame case is controlling in this circumstance. Dame unequivocally holds, noting the purposes of KRS 403.110 and particularly the need for finality between divorcing parties, that lump-sum maintenance awards, paid in one installment or many installments, are not subject to modification.”).

. Dame, 628 S.W.2d at 627.

. Id., at 626.