Court Opinion

ID: 9743218
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 21:28:40.293512+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:24:39.981063
License: Public Domain

Abrams, J.,
(dissenting). I cannot share the court’s certitude that the plaintiff and her former husband agreed that his obligation to pay alimony would terminate if she shared a bedroom with another man “on a regular basis.” Ante at 21. A separation *26agreement incorporated in a judgment of divorce is not an ordinary contract, but a judicially sanctioned contract setting forth the allocation between former spouses of rights, responsibilities, and resources. Although wives today may be less economically dependent on their husbands than was the case in the past, it remains true that the typical alimony recipient is a woman who has sacrificed her earning capacity to her marriage and who, as an equitable and practical matter, must look to her former husband for financial support following a separation or divorce. Such women have little bargaining power and to a large extent must rely on judicial supervision to ensure that their entitlement to support is not made contingent on unjust and unreasonable conditions. See Knox v. Remick, 371 Mass. 433, 436-437 (1976). By giving its imprimatur to an interpretation of the Bell’s separation agreement that hinges the plaintiff’s entitlement to support on her conformity to lifestyle requirements imposed by the defendant, the court encourages economically-dominant husbands to meddle arbitrarily with the postdivorce lives of their wives, and thereby sends an unfortunate message to probate judges charged with scrutinizing such separate agreements to ensure that the agreements are “fair and reasonable. ” Knox v. Remick, supra at 436.
To be sure, there is nothing unreasonable about provisions allowing the defendant and others similarly situated to discontinue support payments in circumstances where the recipient’s need is eliminated or met by another source. As construed by the court, the separation agreement and divorce judgment terminated the plaintiff’s right to support solely because of her involvement in a relationship that does not have the defendant’s approval, without any inquiry into its effect on her need for support and without reciprocal restraint on her husband.
Such a purely punitive elimination of support cannot be reconciled with the agreement’s guarantee that “each [spouse] may lead his or her life free from any . . . restraint by the other.” But even if, as the court decides, the unjustified limitation on the plaintiff’s personal life imposed by a cutoff of support in the circumstances of this case is not plainly inconsistent with the terms of the Bells’ agreement, public policy *27considerations should operate to preclude the result reached by the court. It is well established that a contractual restraint on fundamental private rights is subversive of public policy if it is “more onerous in its nature than is reasonably necessary for the proper fulfillment” of its purposes. Gleason v. Mann, 312 Mass. 420, 423-424, 425 (1942) (agreement that bound woman “to live a life of celibacy” unenforceable on public policy grounds where obligation “could be of no benefit” to employer). Compare Whitinsville Plaza, Inc. v. Kotseas, 378 Mass. 85, 102-103 (1979). By interpreting and enforcing the clause at issue here so as to give judicial sanction to a termination of support, the court allies itself with alimony payors who exercise their economic power in a manner that unreasonably interferes with the private, autonomous lives of the spouse from whom they have been divorced. I dissent.