Court Opinion

ID: 9587007
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 23:17:16.165414+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:32:58.956329
License: Public Domain

THOMAS, Justice,
concurring and dissenting.
I agree that this case must be reversed. I differ from the other members of the court in my view that it would be appropriate for this court to modify the decree to identify the award to the husband as property settlement rather than alimony. My analysis of the case causes me to conclude that, in adopting the decree proposed by the wife, the court, too casually, delegated to counsel its statutory authority and did commit an abuse of discretion in the process.
I have no difficulty with the division of property made by the district court. It seems to me, however, that there is a marked departure in the award of alimony of $1,000 a month to the husband. The markers on the trail are quite plain. In accordance with their antenuptial agreement, the parties received essentially the property they had brought into the marriage. In making the property division, the trial court gave to the wife all the property she had acquired, primarily by inheritance, subsequent to the marriage. The majority acknowledges that the husband contributed a total of approximately $120,000 to the operation of the parties’ ranching business. What is interesting to me is that the trial court then required the wife to pay the husband the same amount, $120,000, but as alimony. The decree requires that the sum should be paid in installments of $1,000 a month for a period of ten years. For me, the relationship between those amounts is too direct to justify a conclusion that the purpose was really to provide a substitute for support to the husband. There is no justification for identifying these payments as alimony so far as federal income tax law is concerned. Consequently, the situation appears to me to be one in which the wife, for some puckish reason of her own, persuaded the trial court to denominate as alimony what obviously was intended to be a return to the husband of property he had contributed to the business operations of the couple during their marriage. I perceive this to constitute what the law identifies as an abuse of discretion, and I would simply modify the decree to identify that amount as property settlement rather than alimony. As the decree now stands, the husband must pay federal income tax on the amounts awarded without any apparent tax advantage to the wife.
I might add that $1,000 a month over 120 months is something less than $120,000 in current value but, in view of our established body of law that property settlements need not necessarily be equal to be equitable, there probably is no purpose to be served in quibbling over the amount. It does seem unjust to further diminish them by the tax burden, however.
I would reverse and remand with instructions to denominate the $120,000 payable at the rate of $1,000 a month as property settlement rather than alimony.