Court Opinion

ID: 9571657
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 20:33:58.385416+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:30:46.498567
License: Public Domain

HENDERSON, Justice
(concurring in part; concurring in result in part;, dissenting in part).
I.
I concur with the entirety of this opinion, with two exceptions.
II.
I agree with the rehabilitative award. Mother has a serious physical impairment. Having lost all of her ability to hear when she was pregnant with twins, she needs rehabilitation. “The alimony award of $6,000.00 per year will reduce his taxable income.” This is a quote from the majority opinion. In my opinion, such a statement is an improper criteria for an alimony award. It is unsupported by case law in this state. It implants a bookkeeping entry or accounting thesis into alimony awards. It is off the judicial wall. If this is good analysis, then any individual, man or woman, cannot validly contest an unjust award of rehabilitative alimony based upon inequity. It is a world away in thought from basic alimony law. It is, in effect, justifying an alimony award based upon a tax break. It is simply a false basis for an award of alimony. See factors in Ryken v. Ryken, 440 N.W.2d 300, 303 (S.D.1989), for both alimony awards and rehabilitative awards.
*526III.
On attorney’s fees, both at trial and appellate level, appellee possesses great liquidity; she has a plethora of assets to pay her own lawyers. With an award of $226,-000.00 in debt-free assets, $500.00 per month in rehabilitative alimony for five years and $1,100.00 in child support, she has fared quite well in the court system. There appears to be no need to have an award of attorney’s fees for her ex-husband to pay. She has the ability to pay and he ought not have to pay. Let us not flail the male because he exists and ended up being in a courtroom. No justification — no award. I dissent on this issue.