Court Opinion

ID: 9639824
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 16:49:22.65478+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:10:22.172981
License: Public Domain

EDGERTON, Associate Justice
(dissenting).
This is not a suit to compel support of a child. It is not even a suit to recover money expended for a child’s support. It is a suit by a mother to recover, for her own use, money which the father had agreed to pay her periodically “for the support” of the child. Though the parties called their agreement a stipulation, and filed it among the papers in a divorce suit, the divorce court did not act upon it. It was not a court order. When the present suit was brought, the purpose which the claimed payments had originally been intended to serve could no longer be accomplished, since the periods during which they were intended to provide support had already elapsed. The agreement in suit was enforceable by appellant, if at all, as a contract for payment of money. The Small Claims Branch of the Municipal Court has exclusive jurisdiction of claims of this amount.1
The District Court had continuing and exclusive jurisdiction to provide support for the child.2 Accordingly it could at any time, prospectively, abrogate the agreement of the parties on the subject. But support of a child is a form of alimony,3 and the District Court has no retrospective jurisdiction over alimony.4 Since it is impossible, in the nature of things, to provide past support, jurisdiction to provide support necessarily relates to the future.5 Appellant filed her motion in the District Court on July 1, 1940. Since its jurisdiction was purely prospective, her motion and its order could not destroy or affect her matured claim for the period before July 1.6
With respect to the period after July 1, the order could abrogate the agreement. How far it did so turns wholly on the intention of the District Court as conveyed in the order. It made no express reference to the agreement. Since it did not abrogate the agreement expressly, the question is whether it did so, to any extent which is here pertinent, by implication. The order was entered “upon consideration of the motion of [appellant] to require [appellee] to pay an increased amount for maintenance of the infant child. * * * ” 7 The record discloses no proposal from any quarter to reduce maintenance, and no suggestion that five dollars a week was excessive, either permanently or temporarily. The order fixed the same weekly amount as the agreement. It provided for support after August 3, and said nothing about the intervening period. Nothing suggests that the District Court intended to cause a lapse in support, by making it cease to accrue under the agreement before it began to accrue under the order. Every suggestion *847is to the contrary. It would take strong evidence to justify imputing to the court an intent to free appellee, for a period of five weeks, from both his statutory and his contract obligation to support his child. So far as appears, the court was not even requested to do such a thing. Since no such intent can be imputed to it, its order had no effect upon the claim now in suit, which is for instalments which accrued before July 29 under the agreement. That claim remained in force, and remained within the jurisdiction of the Municipal Court. That court’s order of dismissal was therefore erroneous.

 D.C.Code (1940) § 11 — 804.

 D.C.Code (1940) § 16 — 413.

 D.C.Code (1940) § 16 — 411.

 Caffrey v. Caffrey, 55 App.D.C. 285, 4 F.2d 952.

 Demonet v. Burkart, 23 App.D.C. 308.

 Woods v. Bard, 285 N.Y. 11, 32 N.E. 2d 772, 774; O’Brien v. O’Brien, 252 App.Div. 427, 299 N.Y.S. 511; Breiter-man v. Breiterman, 239 App.Div. 709, 268 N.Y.S. 628, 631.

 And upon consideration of the motion for custody. Italics supplied.