Court Opinion

ID: 9744010
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 21:52:10.189783+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:24:46.205401
License: Public Domain

Brown, J.
(concurring). Judicial decisions in the highly charged emotional area of divorce law almost certainly produce human pain. This area of law, in my view, more perhaps than any other, requires, in addition to able and sensitive professional conduct, wise counselling and a realistic evaluation of the long term economic consequences of the divorce judgment. With this preface, I think that decisions to take an appeal, or not to settle when an appeal is taken, must be made only after extremely careful, thorough, and candid consultations are conducted with one’s client. For sure, the mutual animus of the parties should not be the propellant to the appellate level.
*172This is an area, as our opinion observes, where probate judges have broad discretion, and, although we are obliged to give deference to trial judges, we, of course, will not abdicate our review responsibility and will modify or reverse in those instances when the facts and law compel it, particularly, as here, where the decision is manifestly unfair or the award inequitable. Compare Newman v. Newman, 11 Mass. App. Ct. 903 (1981), and Winternitz v. Winternitz, 19 Mass. App. Ct. 228, 232-233 (1985), and authorities cited, with Yee v. Yee, 23 Mass. App. Ct. 483 (1987). This court, and all courts, should never “play a role in continuing and contributing to women’s inferior economic and social status.” Supreme Judicial Court, Gender Bias Study of the Court System in Massachusetts 19 (1989).