Court Opinion

ID: 9620700
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 05:46:09.803978+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:04:53.344697
License: Public Domain

Nichols, Chief Justice,
dissenting.
I dissent from the holding in Division 2 of the opinion and from the judgment of reversal. The appellant was permitted to testify that she had not worked outside the home during the early years of the marriage but was not permitted to testify that the appellee had insisted that she not work outside the home.
Code § 30-209 provides in part: "The jury rendering the final verdict in a divorce suit may provide permanent alimony for the wife, either from the corpus of the estate or otherwise, according to the condition of the husband. In all cases where alimony is awarded to the wife, her separate estate and earning capacity, as well as any fixed liabilities of the husband for the support of minor children, shall be taken into consideration in fixing the amount.”
The cases cited by the majority properly hold that the separate estate and earning capacity of the wife should be considered by the jury in determining alimony. I have no objection to such holdings as they have long been the law in Georgia. My complaint deals solely with the contention that evidence as to the "reason” the wife did not work during the years of the marriage has any relationship to her earning capacity. Whether she. did not work at the husband’s request, or because she did not want to work, has no relevance to the question of her earning capacity. The fact that she did not work is material. This would explain that her former training and skills, unused, had affected her competitive position in the labor market, would thus affect her earning capacity and be relevant information for the jury’s consideration.
To imply that a wife who refrained from working outside the home during the years of marriage solely due to her husband’s request or demand is entitled to more alimony than a wife who of her own volition, or for other reasons which she may have deemed necessary, refrained from working outside the home, flies into the face of the statutory law as well as the decisions of this court.
*639I respectfully dissent.
I am authorized to state that Presiding Justice Undercofler concurs in this dissent.