Court Opinion

ID: 9889822
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-10-11 17:07:46.265022+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:49:06.205860
License: Public Domain

IN THE COURT OF APPEALS OF IOWA

                                   No. 23-0060
                             Filed October 11, 2023

IN RE THE MARRIAGE OF FRANCES ELIZABETH PIPES
AND RODERICK PIPES

Upon the Petition of
FRANCES ELIZABETH PIPES,
      Petitioner-Appellant,

And Concerning
RODERICK PIPES,
     Respondent-Appellee.
________________________________________________________________

      Appeal from the Iowa District Court for Polk County, Samantha Gronewald,

Judge.

      Frances Pipes appeals from the decree dissolving her marriage to Roderick

Pipes. AFFIRMED.

      Katherine S. Sargent and Gary E. Hill of Family Law Solutions of Iowa LLC,

Des Moines, for appellant.

      Roderick Pipes, Bondurant, self-represented appellee.

      Considered by Tabor, P.J., and Buller and Langholz, JJ.
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LANGHOLZ, Judge.

       Frances Pipes appeals from the decree dissolving her marriage to Roderick

Pipes. She argues that the district court should have awarded her traditional

spousal support—despite their sixteen-year marriage falling below the typical

durational threshold for that support—because she suffered a disability during the

marriage and claims she cannot work. But the district court found it more credible

that Frances has been choosing not to seek employment.                 Because of the

deference we owe both a district court’s credibility finding and its equitable

judgment in deciding whether to award spousal support, we cannot conclude the

court acted inequitably.

       Frances also seeks to increase her attorney-fee award from $2000 to

$7500—the full amount she owes her attorney. But the district court did not abuse

its discretion in deciding that the parties’ respective abilities to pay did not justify a

larger award. We thus affirm.

       I.     Background Facts and Proceedings

       Frances and Roderick Pipes were married for sixteen years. They married

in their thirties and did not have any children together. But they both have adult

children from prior relationships.

       Frances has an associate’s degree, a bachelor’s degree in psychology, and

a master’s degree in business administration. She worked a number of varied jobs

during the first nine years of their marriage, including positions with multiple

insurance companies, a hotel, and the State of Iowa. But in 2015, she fell while

vacationing in Jamaica and injured her knee. She claims that since then, she has

been unable to work full-time because of the injury and related health issues.
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      Despite the injury, she has attempted to work multiple different jobs that she

ultimately did not maintain. She eventually qualified for Social Security disability

benefits due to the knee injury and other health issues. At the time of trial, that

monthly benefit was $1270. She kept applying for part-time jobs unsuccessfully.

And she has continued to travel often. For example, in the month or two before

trial she visited Arizona, Kentucky, and Oklahoma.

      Roderick has a GED and a commercial driver’s license. At the time of trial,

he worked as a swing driver for a waste management company. He makes

considerably more income than Frances: his base wage was about thirty-one

dollars per hour with a slightly higher wage for certain shifts. He testified he

generally works fifty-five to sixty hours per week, with everything over forty hours

per week overtime paid at time-and-a-half.       But he also testified he has no

guaranteed overtime and his employer is moving toward limiting employees to forty

hours per week because of a recent loss of clients.

      In April 2021, Frances filed the petition for dissolution.       The parties

eventually agreed to a distribution of their property that the court accepted. Most

relevant, Roderick kept their house and some vehicles, while Frances got other

vehicles and both her and Roderick’s retirement accounts totaling close to

$50,000. Roderick also retained the obligation to pay their mortgage and his

bankruptcy-plan payments that continue until December 2023.

      The parties did not reach agreement on Frances’s requests for traditional

spousal support and attorney fees. She sought monthly payments from Roderick

of $1000 that would increase to $1500 when his bankruptcy-plan obligations ended

and then revert to $1000 after she turned sixty-five. The payments would continue
                                          4

until either of them dies or Frances remarries or cohabitates with a paramour. She

also asked for an award of her $7500 in attorney fees—the entire flat rate amount

that she owed her attorney.

       So the parties went to trial in July 2022 disputing only these issues. Both

parties were originally represented by counsel. But after paying at least $3500,

Roderick decided he could not afford an attorney and represented himself at trial.

He argued that the court should not award any spousal support or attorney fees.

       The district court mostly agreed with Roderick. It declined to order spousal

support. But it ordered Roderick to pay $2000 toward Frances’s attorney fees.

The court also adopted the property distribution agreed to by the parties. Frances

then moved to reconsider, arguing mainly that it was inequitable to decline to

award traditional spousal support and attorney fees when the property distribution

was unequal: awarding property valued at about $61,000 to her and about

$139,000 to Roderick. In response, the district court reconsidered the decree and

ordered Roderick to pay monthly equalization payments totaling $27,500. The

district court still declined to award spousal support or attorney fees. Frances

appeals those decisions.

       II.    Spousal Support

       We review a district court’s decision on spousal support de novo. In re

Marriage of Sokol, 985 N.W.2d 177, 182 (Iowa 2023). Yet even so, we give

deference to the district court’s “important, but often conjectural, judgment calls”

and must not engage in “undue tinkering” on appeal. Id. at 182–83 (citation

omitted). Thus, we will “disturb the district court’s determination of spousal support
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‘only when there has been a failure to do equity.’” Id. (quoting In re Marriage of

Gust, 858 N.W.2d 402, 406 (Iowa 2015)).

       “Spousal support is not an absolute right; rather, its allowance is determined

based on the particular circumstances presented in each case.” Id. at 185 (quoting

In re Marriage of Mills, 983 N.W.2d 61, 67 (Iowa 2022)). “Iowa courts are to

equitably award spousal support by considering” the statutory factors under Iowa

Code section 598.21A(1) (2021). Id. (cleaned up).

       Frances seeks only one of the four forms of spousal support recognized by

our supreme court: traditional spousal support. Such support “is equitable in

marriages of long duration to allow the recipient spouse to maintain the lifestyle to

which he or she became accustomed.” Id. “Generally, only ‘marriages lasting

twenty or more years commonly cross the durational threshold and merit serious

consideration for traditional spousal support.’” Id. (quoting Gust, 858 N.W.2d at

410–11). But with “extraordinary” facts—such as a mother suffering permanent

disability during childbirth that prevented her from working—traditional spousal

support may be justified “even where the marriage was not close to meeting” the

threshold. Id. at 186 (citing Mills, 983 N.W.2d at 73).

       Frances recognizes that her sixteen-year marriage to Roderick falls outside

this typical durational threshold for traditional spousal support. But she argues that

traditional support is still appropriate—as it was in In re Marriage of Mills, 983

N.W.2d 61 (Iowa 2022)—because she suffered a disability that she claims

prevents her from working.

       This case indeed presents some similarities with Mills. The marriages are

of similar duration: sixteen years and nearly fifteen years. See Mills, 983 N.W.2d
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at 66. Both spouses seeking traditional alimony suffered a disability during their

marriages and claimed they could no longer work to support themselves. See id.

But there is one critical difference. In Mills, the district court found the wife’s

“testimony regarding her inability to work credible.” Id. Yet here, the district court

found Frances’s testimony that she could not work “less than credible.” Instead,

the district court found it “more credible” that Frances had chosen “not to pursue

employment of any kind.”

       We place particular weight on this credibility finding. See In re Marriage of

McDermott, 827 N.W.2d 671, 676 (Iowa 2013); Iowa R. App. P. 6.904(3)(g). And

there is a basis in the record for it. Frances testified that she had traveled often—

including trips to Arizona, Kentucky, and Oklahoma in the months just before trial—

and that she hoped to return to school. Roderick testified that she generally could

not hold long-term employment throughout their marriage even before her injury.

Frances’s testimony that she kept applying for part-time jobs also confirms her

belief that she is capable of some level of employment.

       Because of the district court’s credibility finding on Frances’s ability to work

and our own review of this record, we reject her argument for avoiding the typical

durational threshold based on her disability.        And Frances offers no other

arguments that would justify serious consideration of traditional spousal support

outside these well-established contours. True, the twenty-year threshold has not

been treated as “a bright-line test.” In re Marriage of Nelson, No. 15-0492, 2016

WL 3269573, at *3 (Iowa Ct. App. June 15, 2016). But the supreme court recently

characterized the award of traditional spousal support after a fifteen-year marriage

in Mills as “not falling within the well-established” category because that duration
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“was not close to meeting ‘the typical durational threshold.’” Sokol, 985 N.W.2d at

185 (quoting Mills, 983 N.W.2d at 73). And thus, without the extraordinary facts

that justified that award, the discretion to award traditional spousal support here “is

limited.” Id.

       To be sure, the other statutory factors considered by the district court also

weigh against awarding traditional spousal support. Frances is in her mid-fifties

and has a master’s in business administration providing significant earning

potential if she chooses to work. The property distribution left Frances with both

her and Roderick’s retirement accounts and equalization payments totaling

$27,500. In contrast, Roderick received few, if any, liquid assets. What’s more,

he maintains significant obligations to make the equalization payments,

bankruptcy-plan payments, and mortgage payments on the marital home. This

leaves him with little flexibility to pay spousal support in the immediate future. And

because he lost his retirement account, he also needs to rebuild his own retirement

funds. The district court did not fail to do equity by denying Frances’s request for

traditional spousal support.

       III.     Attorney Fees

       We review the district court’s decision on attorney fees for an abuse of

discretion. In re Marriage of Sullins, 715 N.W.2d 242, 255 (Iowa 2006). Parties in

a dissolution proceeding are not entitled to attorney fees as a matter of right; the

court has “considerable discretion.” In re Marriage of Willcoxson, 250 N.W.2d 425,

427 (Iowa 1977). The key factor to be considered is “the respective abilities of the

parties to pay.” Sullins, 715 N.W.2d at 255 (quoting In re Marriage of Guyer, 522

N.W.2d 818, 822 (Iowa 1994)).
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       Frances argues that the district court should have awarded her the entire

$7500 in fees that she owes her attorney. Instead, the district court decided that

an award of $2000 in fees would be “fair and equitable” after concluding that

neither party had “a greater ability than the other to pay” the larger sum. Frances

challenges that decision by focusing on her limited liquid assets and ability to pay.

But that focus overlooks that Roderick also has limited liquid assets and ongoing

bankruptcy-plan payments that limit his ability to pay. Indeed, Roderick chose to

represent himself at trial—and in this appeal—after deciding that he could not

afford to pay any more fees to his own attorney. The district court did not abuse

its discretion in awarding only some of Frances’s attorney fees.

       AFFIRMED.