Court Opinion

ID: 9687767
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 16:47:33.646915+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:18:31.664455
License: Public Domain

LANSING, Judge,
(concurring in part, dissenting in part).
I concur in the majority’s determination that the three issues raised by the notice of review should be affirmed. The district court properly denied the motion for contempt, the request for attorneys’ fees, and the motion to compel discovery. The motion for contempt was procedurally defective, the request for attorneys’ fees was factually unsupported, and the motion to compel discovery was waived.
I also concur in the majority’s determination that the district court erred in concluding that the Kielleys’ agreement to modify spousal maintenance was contractually defective for lack of consideration. The district court has too narrowly defined consideration and has overlooked forbearance of litigation as adequate consideration for an agreement. See Cady v. Coleman, 315 N.W.2d 593, 596 (Minn.1982) (equating forbearance to consideration); State v. Hart Motor Express, 270 Minn. 24, 29, 132 N.W.2d 391, 394 (Minn.1964).(holding that forbearance of legal action is adequate consideration for agreement).
I respectfully dissent, however, from the majority’s decision to impose a formal mul-tifactor test on postdecree modification agreements. These agreements are not the same as the private agreements that expressly preclude or limit modification of maintenance under Minn.Stat. § 518.552, subd. 5 (2002), and the same degree of formality should not attend them. As the district court observed, there is good reason to avoid precedent that requires parties to a dissolution “every time they want to make some change, [to] have to come back into court and execute waivers of counsel and put something on the record ... they have to make life work.”
Finally, I dissent from the majority’s declining to reverse and remand on the issue of spousal-maintenance modification. The district court failed to make particularized findings on the reasons for denying the modification and precluded a determination on the merits by denying an eviden-tiary hearing or an opportunity to supplement the record. I would reverse and remand on this issue.