Court Opinion

ID: 9775931
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 19:13:11.411713+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:32:32.079633
License: Public Domain

CRAHAN, Judge,
concurring in part and dissenting in part.
I concur in the majority opinion except insofar as it affirms the award of $800.00 per month maintenance to Wife.
The trial court made no finding that Wife was unable to support herself through appropriate employment; it merely found that she was without adequate means. Wife supported herself for a number of years prior to the marriage and continued to work during the marriage, earning in excess of $30,000.00 per year in her last year of full-time employment. Because the plant where she had been working was going to be closed, she terminated her employment voluntarily in order to obtain severance benefits. She then collected unemployment for a year while she looked for work. She did not apply at a number of firms that might be expected to have similar work available. She was offered at least two full-time positions which she rejected for various reasons.
In response to questions from the court, Wife testified that approximately one year prior to trial she obtained a part-time position at NARCO working in the warehouse for $8.00 per hour. She works from 10:30 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. for a total of 20 hours per week. Although she was told when she was hired that the job could turn into a full-time position, there had been no indication or offer of full-time employment during the year she had worked there. Since Wife began working at NARCO, she had not looked elsewhere for full-time employment. She had recently interviewed for another part-time job. In response to the court’s question, “Is there anything to keep you from working full-time at this time?” Wife replied “No, sir.”
There is no issue of credibility here. The issue is whether an able-bodied woman with a strong work history who works part-time and fails even to look for full-time work for a full year is entitled to an award of maintenance that does not impute to her some minimum level of earnings that could be gained from full-time employment. I cannot *683imagine that we would affirm an award that did not impute full-time earnings to Husband if the situation were reversed.
The majority sets forth in full the trial court’s findings as to why an award of maintenance of limited duration would be inappropriate. Opn. at 678. The trial court is certainly correct that “there is no evidence that establishes that there is an impending change in the financial circumstances of the parties.” That is the problem! Wife testified that she “loves” her part-time job at NARCO and had not even looked for full-time work in the year she has been employed there. The award of maintenance, which imputes no additional income to Wife, effectively eliminates any incentive for Wife to do anything to improve her situation. Thus, the situation is indeed unlikely to change anytime in the near future.
The clear effect of the decree is to sanction Wife’s decision to continue working only 20 hours per week at a job that holds no definite prospect of full-time employment in the near future when the consequence of that choice is in effect to saddle Husband with payments on the home awarded to Wife that she could not otherwise afford.1 In my view, this is squarely in conflict with the mandate of § 452.335.1 RSMo 1994 that a spouse seeking maintenance demonstrate both an inability to provide for her reasonable needs and an inability to support herself through appropriate employment.
I do not dispute the majority’s holding that Wife’s failure to take steps to secure full-time employment within a “reasonable” time can support a motion to modify. But the cases cited in support of that doctrine are distinguishable because in each of those cases there was a basis, such as the need to care for young children, or long absence from the workforce, or the need to obtain retraining that justified the entry of an original decree which did not impute income to the nonworking spouse in fashioning the maintenance award. The cases relied upon by the majority thus establish that when the conditions which led the court not to impute income in computing the original maintenance award are no longer present, a spouse’s failure to seek employment can be considered a change in circumstances justifying a reduction in maintenance by imputing income the spouse is capable of earning through employment. The cases do not suggest that it is appropriate not to impute income to a spouse who plainly is capable of working full-time at the time of the original decree but has elected instead to work part-time and not to seek full-time employment.
I would hold that the trial court abused its discretion and misapplied the law in failing to impute full-time earnings to Wife in calculating the maintenance award. Accordingly, I would reverse and remand the maintenance award with directions to recalculate the award after imputation of full-time earnings.

. The monthly house payment is $818.00; the monthly maintenance payment is $800.00.