Court Opinion

ID: 9672671
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 03:58:43.384592+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:16:17.693784
License: Public Domain

VANCE, Justice,
concurring in result.
This opinion affirms the award of maintenance by the trial court, and I concur in that result. In my opinion, however, this court has again displayed a disturbing tendency to rule upon matters which are unnecessary to the decision of the case.
*334The medical degree in this case was obtained in 1977, and by the time the dissolution of marriage was granted, the movant was earning $125,000 per year. The parties had acquired a large house and 97 acres of land in Warren County, and they had established a lifestyle which had already begun to reflect the financial potential of the medical degree and license.
The award of maintenance can be affirmed on the facts of this case. It is entirely unnecessary to the decision of this case for us to rule that the potential for increased earnings brought about by a professional degree and license is not an asset which can be considered in the division of marital property.
I believe, therefore, that we should wait for a case where the decision of this matter is necessary to the disposition of the case before we decide the question. In particular, I am thinking of a case where a divorce is granted immediately after the professional degree is obtained. Then, there would have been absolutely no opportunity for the married couple to have established a standard of living which reflected the potential of the increased earning capacity. All that they would have established would be years of sacrifice, willingly undertaken, because of the prospect of future advantages which they would share.
Divorce, shortly after obtaining the professional license, nullifies the prospect of the future mutual benefit from the shared sacrifices of the past. Furthermore, the parties are not equally equipped to fend for themselves.
Our statute does not authorize maintenance for a spouse who is able to maintain herself. In Casper v. Casper, Ky., 510 S.W.2d 253 (1974), we interpreted this to mean the inability of a spouse to support himself according to the standard of living established during the marriage. No case, to my knowledge, has extended this to mean “inability to support one’s self” according to a “potential for support” established during the marriage.
Thus, I cannot find authority for the use of a potential for increased earnings which has not yet occurred as a basis for an award of maintenance in excess of that necessary to maintain the spouse in accordance with the standard of living established by the parties. Some states consider the “potential for increased earning capacity” which accompanies a professional degree earned during the marriage as a marital asset in the division of marital property. In Re Marriage of Horstman, Iowa, 263 N.W.2d 885 (1978); Stern v. Stem, 66 N.J. 340, 331 A.2d 257 (1975).
Admittedly, the valuation of this potential for purposes of property division poses some difficulty, but no more difficulty, it seems to me, than a determination of the extent to which a professional degree should be considered in awarding maintenance.
My premise is not that we should in this case hold the potential of increased earning capacity which attends a professional degree to be marital property, but simply that we should not hold it is not marital property in a case where such a holding is entirely unnecessary to the disposition of the case.