Court Opinion

ID: 9548179
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 17:58:48.8408+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:18:35.234440
License: Public Domain

SHEPARD, Justice,
dissenting.
During the fourteenth century, Clement V. excommunicated Bologna, which had become a university center for learning and scholarship. The students and faculty were divided among Padua and other centers of learning. The response of the cognoscenti of that day rings down the centuries and is applicable to the majority opinion of today. Quomodo secatur, manet Bologna.
Prior to the marriage, the defendant-husband herein purchased the Maryland property and made a substantial down payment thereon. The value of that property doubled and perhaps trebled in a few short years. During those years, loans were secured, with the property serving as security. Approximately half of the property was sold in differing parcels, and some of the proceeds were utilized for the purchase of the Moscow, Idaho property. The majority asserts that the husband had invested approximately $19,000 of his non-marital assets in the property.
The majority’s arithmetic legerdemain converts the marital interest in the Maryland property from zero in 1972 to a figure of approximately $77,000 in 1979, while the husband’s non-marital interest in the property is miraculously reduced to approximately $10,000. That process may well leave observers breathless. If the intent of the majority is that “the spouse who contributed non-marital funds, and the marital unit that contributed marital funds each receive a proportionate and fair return on their investment,” then the Court has produced a hew and strange world of fairness and equity.
Since the division of these various properties is so interwoven, and since the parties have stipulated as to the distribution of the Idaho properties to the wife in return for a reduction of the monetary judgment, I doubt that any effectual changes can be made.
I agree with the majority that the matter of child support must be remanded. How*355ever, in my view, it should be reversed. The husband is a Commander in the United States Navy and subject to governmental assignment. At the time of trial, his station was a small sea coast town in Maine. He received custody of one of the children. His after-tax income is approximately $25,-000 per year. The wife, on the other hand, is well educated, speaks five languages, and has a history of employment. She, however, does not desire employment, but would prefer to stay home and write books.
The trial court awarded the wife $15,000 per year in child support. Travel expenses for the children to spend the summer months with their father were then approximately $2,000 per year. Thus, the husband was left with approximately $8,000 annually. Inexplicably, the trial judge refused to order any dimunition of the monthly child support during the two summer months, when the husband would have custody of the children.
One might expect that some of the husband’s obligations might be liquidated by the sale of the Maryland property. Such an eventuality, however, was prevented by action upon the Idaho judgment in Maryland, with a resultant lien upon the Maryland property. The trial court refused to stay those foreign actions pending appeal, and he further issued orders of garnishment on the husband’s pay to the appropriate officials of the U.S. Navy. Notably, the situation is not one in which the husband has refused to pay child support. The record indicates regular and substantial payments every month.
In my view, this action has already been pending for too many years, with the inevitable disastrous consequences falling upon the parties and their children. I see no way to adequately untangle the property affairs of the parties and would leave them to the settlement at which they arrived. As to the child support, I would reverse the trial court decree and direct the entry of an order for child support in the amount of $800 per month (approximately the same amount initially contracted for by the parties and their attorneys). I do not say that such is an adequate amount to support and raise the children in the mother’s custody. In any but the wealthiest families, upon a divorce, particularly where children are involved, substantial changes in life style inevitably take place. Each parent, if able, must contribute to the support of the children. I.C. § 18-401; Shumway v. Shumway, 106 Idaho 415, 679 P.2d 1133 (1984). If a well-educated father with a history of employment became unemployed because he preferred to sit home, drink beer, watch the sun set, and write poetry, he would draw little sympathy when he failed to pay child support. What is sauce for the gander should not be made into a horse of a different color.