Court Opinion

ID: 9667665
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 01:51:52.208078+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:15:39.729120
License: Public Domain

LeGRAND, Justice
(dissenting).
In this case the majority orders a husband to pay for child support and alimony virtually all of his earned income for the next six years, a slightly less burdensome amount for the next five-and-one-half years, and awards her outright $30,000 more than the trial court allowed by way of property settlement. I think this result is wrong for several reasons, and I therefore dissent.
The general principles by which disputes like this are governed are without dispute and are correctly stated in the majority opinion. My quarrel is with the manner in which they have been applied here. Despite the majority’s claim of adherence to Schantz v. Schantz, 163 N.W.2d 398 (Iowa 1969), I contend the opinion flies directly in the face of the guidelines of that case. Except for length of marriage — sixteen years — every other Schantz criterion militates against the conclusion reached by the majority.
After 22 years of continuous employment in a bank controlled by his family, respondent has attained the status of teller with an annual salary of $8600. Until two years ago he earned $6000 per year. The evidence shows he will continue to have employment at the bank, but that his present position is “where he’s going.”
He is 44 years old, she is 40. He has physical disabilities which impair his job *177performance, she is in perfect health. She is better educated than he and has her own profession — nursing—from which she concedes she can earn at least as much as he makes at the bank.
Almost everything these two people have came to them by way of gift from his family. This includes the homestead and most of its furnishings. The trial court awarded petitioner property having an approximate value of $50,000. The decree also provided for support payments for three minor children fluctuating over the next six years from $625 per month down to $400 per month, depending upon the ages of the children from time to time. Then payments decrease to $225 per month for the only child who will still be a minor.
The majority leaves the support payments undisturbed, but provides for alimony in the amount of $350 per month for ten years and $450 per month for eighteen months thereafter. The total alimony awarded is $50,100. The majority also increased the property settlement in petitioner’s favor by $30,000 payable at respondent’s option in a lump sum or in twelve equal annual installments.
I believe these amounts are entirely unreasonable and unrealistic in view of the circumstances shown by the evidence. Respondent’s earned income is approximately $12,000. (He receives fees for managing family property in addition to his bank earnings.) He also receives approximately $7500 from investments. Under the sliding scale of payments which the decree sets up, supplemented by the additional awards in the majority’s schedule, respondent will pay over the next six years in support and alimony the following amounts: $11,100 for one year; $11,700 for each of the next two years; $9,000 for each of the following two years; and $9600 for the sixth year. Thereafter he will pay $6900 for each of the succeeding four years. His obligations will terminate — finally—with total payments of $8100 over an eighteen-month period for additional alimony after his youngest child has reached majority.
Taking into consideration age, health, earning capacity, source of property, and several other Schantz “factors” mentioned later, I must protest the result thus reached. There is nothing to justify allowing petitioner to live off the largess of her husband’s family after dissolution as she has done during the sixteen years the marriage endured.
Several statements of the majority as bases for its holdings require some comment. The opinion talks of the value of property which has come to respondent from his parents. It is indeed considerable. However, much of it remains in a marital trust over which his mother has unrestricted power of appointment. There are others who may be preferred over respondent when and if that power is exercised — another child and a number of grandchildren. What she does could substantially reduce the property ultimately going to respondent. Yet the majority treats all of it as though it had already vested in him.
The majority also seems to object strenuously to the trial court’s mention of “women’s liberation, sex equality, and the general social and economic emancipation of women” in reciting the reasons for its decretal conclusions. Perhaps the trial court overemphasized this modern trend, but the result was nevertheless the correct one, even though the reasons for it may be subject to criticism. Furthermore how can we say woman’s new status — recognized by almost everyone and statutorily mandated in many areas — is entitled to no consideration as a “factor” under the Schantz case? It is interesting, too, that the majority finds itself unable to “judicially note that women have achieved social and eco*178nomic equality with men” while at the same time taking such notice, without eviden-tiary support, that petitioner “has lost seniority, pay increases, and possible pension rights.” I find the former as judicially noticeable as the latter.
The majority reaches another debatable, if not entirely untenable, conclusion in finding this healthy and athletic 40-year-old woman has lost much of her “alertness, and physical, nervous and emotional stamina” compared to a woman of 24, her age at marriage. From this the majority reasons her employment opportunities have diminished. Aside from the fact that I am unwilling to say a woman forty years old is over the hill, the evidence belies the majority’s reasoning in the present case. It is clear petitioner can secure quick, if not immediate, employment as a nurse. Perhaps not in the teaching area, which she would prefer, but in the nursing profession generally.
In conclusion I make brief mention of the reliance placed by the majority on the claim the children are not used to a “working mother” and that it would disrupt their home routine if petitioner should now be required to take a full-time job. While there are several possible answers to this, again the reply here may be found in the evidence. Petitioner has always spent a great deal of time away from home. She could hold full-time employment without being gone much more than formerly simply by giving up her avid pursuit of her two main recreations, golf and bridge. Certainly these are both innocent and interesting diversions, but as practiced by her, they are also very time consuming. Perhaps this is a sacrifice she must make for the sake of her children.
I would affirm the trial court.
MASON and RAWLINGS, JJ., join this dissent.