Court Opinion

ID: 9792977
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-31 02:40:16.247968+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T08:02:09.663772
License: Public Domain

*130DISSENTING OPINION OF
M. DOI, CIRCUIT JUDGE
I join in Justice Levinson’s dissent and add the following:
Presumably, the majority would agree that the original decree did “incorporate by reference” the agreement if the language in the decree is construed as an approval of the entire agreement. For clearly, approval of the express request contained in the agreement that “it be incorporated into and form a part of any decree of divorce that may be entered” must be equated with incorporation.
However, the majority reasons that by tacking on the phrase “pursuant to HRS § 573-2,” the Family Court intended to and did restrict its approval of the agreement only to an approval of the periodic payment provision contained therein. This is so, it is said, because the agreement, among other things, provides for periodic payments, and since the statute validates such periodic payments only if approved by the judge, the judge was only approving that which required his approval for validation and no more.
I cannot subscribe to such reasoning.
The agreement provides for the continuing jurisdiction of the court over all of its terms with a request that it (the agreement) be incorporated into the decree. This was intended by the parties as the mechanics for enforcement of the entire agreement, including the obligations relating to periodic payments. Even hypertechnical reasoning should conclude that if the provision for periodic payments were approved in the decree, then the provision for enforcement of those periodic payments were also approved because the latter is related to and supplements the former. And if so, approval of the enforcement provision is nothing less than approval of “the request that it (the entire agreement) be incorporated into and form a part of” the decree.
Furthermore, the decree states that “the Property Settlement Agreement” (and not “the periodic payments for support contained in the Property Settlement Agreement”) is *131approved. The most that can be attributed to the mention of the statute is that the decree referenced the statutory validation for certain of its provisions. This is so because the statute not only provides for periodic payments when approved by the judge but also provides for the validity of husband-wife contracts relating to property rights when made in contemplation of divorce. The agreement contains provisions for periodic payments and it also deals with property rights made in contemplation of divorce. All of these provisions were merely being referenced to the statutory authority for making them and no more. To give to such referencing the effect of restricting the Family Court’s approval only to the provision for periodic payments is highly unrealistic.