Court Opinion

ID: 9488522
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 12:47:50.968888+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:52:56.288335
License: Public Domain

MORRIS SHEPPARD ARNOLD,
Circuit Judge, dissenting.
I would affirm the judgment of the district court based on the well-reasoned opinion that it filed.
It may be true, as the court opines, that “exemptions from discharge for spousal sup*752port deserve a more liberal construction” than other kinds of exemptions, although I do not know where such a canon of construction might have sprung from. But assuming that such a canon exists, it seems to me that the plain language of the statute here would keep it from affecting the result in this case.
It is one thing to be liberal, say, on the question of what kind of debt is “in the nature of maintenance and support.” Indeed, the court is very liberal in that respect here, especially since the relevant state decree is quite opaque on the question of what the intention of the judge was in making the award. In fact, it would seem that hereafter any decree that directs the husband to pay the wife money that will relieve her of an obligation that she would otherwise have, will, regardless of the nature of that obligation, qualify the decree as one that creates a debt “in the nature of maintenance and support,” because it will have the effect of freeing up resources for the maintenance and support of her and her children. This far, I admit, the court’s supposed canon might conceivably carry us.
What it cannot do, however, is overcome the plain language of the statute that a debt must be a “debt to a spouse” before it can qualify as nondischargeable. See 11 U.S.C. § 523(a)(5). In re Spong, 661 F.2d 6 (2d Cir.1981), is not particularly apposite (nor are the cases that rely on it), since there the husband promised the wife to pay the relevant debt, thus creating an obligation to her on which the attorney could sue as a third-party beneficiary. Here there is no such undertaking and no obligation created to the wife. She was owed nothing. The appellant in this case could have asked the state court that rendered the decree to order the husband to pay his fee to the wife, but he did not. Since there was never an obligation running from the husband to the wife, there was no obligation that could have been dis-chargeable under 11 U.S.C. § 523(a)(5).
I therefore respectfully dissent from the court’s judgment.