Court Opinion

ID: 9572271
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 20:40:15.534932+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:32:12.701049
License: Public Domain

Justice EXUM
dissenting.
I must dissent from the result reached by the majority. The provisions of the consent judgment that require defendant to pay a specified sum of money to plaintiff over a specified time “regardless of whether or not the parties are divorced or the plaintiff should remarry during said period of time” are so clearly an agreement by defendant to pay a sum certain of money and not to pay alimony “even though denominated as such,” that as a matter of law it may not be modified under our decision in White v. White, 296 N.C. 661, 252 S.E. 2d 698 (1979). In order for provisions for payments in a consent judgment to be modifiable, the consent judgment must first be a true order of the court. Bunn v. Bunn, 262 N.C. 67, 136 S.E. 2d 240 (1964). I have no quarrel with the majority’s conclusion that this consent judgment did constitute a judgment of the court. Beyond this I cannot concur in the majority’s opinion.
The second requisite for modifiability of an unexecuted provision for periodic payments
is that the order be one to pay alimony. Even though denominated as such, periodic support payments to a dependent spouse may not be alimony within the meaning of the statute [G.S. 50-16.9(a)] and thus modifiable if they and other provisions for a property division between the parties con*388stitute reciprocal consideration for each other. As explained by Justice, now Chief Justice Sharp in Bunn v. Bunn, supra, 262 N.C. at 70, 136 S.E. 2d at 243:
‘[A]n agreement for the division of property rights and an order for the payment of alimony may be included as separable provisions in a consent judgment. In such event the division of property would be beyond the power of the court to change, but the order for future installments of alimony would be subject to modification in a proper case. (Citations omitted.) However, if the support provisions and the division of property constitute a reciprocal consideration so that the entire agreement would be destroyed by a modification of the support provision, they are not separable and may not be changed without the consent of both parties.’ (Emphasis added.)
White v. White, supra, 296 N.C. at 666-67, 252 S.E. 2d at 701. It is this second requirement for modifiability, i.e., that the court-ordered payments be alimony, that is not met as a matter of law in this case. The consent judgment is not ambiguous on this point. The district court, therefore, erred in conducting an evidentiary hearing on this question, and the Court of Appeals correctly reversed the district court’s determination that the' payments were modifiable.
The majority unnecessarily departs from well-considered and helpful principles firmly established in our case law which coalesced in Bunn v. Bunn, supra, 262 N.C. 67, 136 S.E. 2d 240, a well-analyzed opinion by Justice, later Chief Justice, Sharp. On the one hand the opinion quotes and cites Bunn approvingly, but then indicates that some portions of Bunn and Levitch v. Levitch, 294 N.C. 437, 241 S.E. 2d 506 (1978), may be inconsistent with the decision and are overruled.
Apparently the majority’s position is that whenever parties enter into a consent judgment* in a domestic relations case any *389unexecuted provisions of the judgment are always modifiable by the court notwithstanding that the parties, for reasons satisfactory to themselves, have agreed that these provisions shall not be modified. The majority chooses, ostrich-like, simply to ignore the fact that consent judgments, even in domestic cases, have attributes of both judgments and contracts. All of our domestic relations cases, so far as my research reveals, have recognized this fact; of course Bunn v. Bunn, supra, does also. Thus this Court said in McCrary v. McCrary, 228 N.C. 714, 719, 47 S.E. 2d 27, 31 (1948):
A judgment by consent is the agreement of the parties, their decree, entered upon the record with the sanction of the court. [Citation omitted.] It is not a judicial determination of the rights of the parties and does not purport to represent the judgment of the court, but merely records the preexisting agreement of the parties, [Citations omitted.] It acquires the status of a judgment, with all its incidents, through the approval of the judge and its recordation in the records of the court.
The fact that the consent judgment rests on a contract between the parties makes it “no less a decree of the court.” Bunn v. Bunn, supra, 262 N.C. at 70, 136 S.E. 2d at 243. One of the attributes of a court decree is that it is enforceable by contempt. The court’s power to enforce its judgment by contempt is not lessened by the fact that the judgment was entered by consent. Bunn v. Bunn, supra; Stancil v. Stancil, 255 N.C. 507, 121 S.E. 2d 882 (1961); Smith v. Smith, 247 N.C. 223, 100 S.E. 2d 370 (1957); Edmundson v. Edmundson, 222 N.C. 181, 22 S.E. 2d 576 (1942).
Because, however, a consent judgment is also a contract between the parties, the agreement, unless it is against public policy, Rowe v. Rowe, 305 N.C. 177, 287 S.E. 2d 840 (1982), may not be modified by the court where the parties intend that certain provisions not be modified. Thus the Court said in King v. King, 225 N.C. 639, 640, 35 S.E. 2d 893, 899 (1945):
*390[I]t is a settled principle of law in this jurisdiction that a consent judgment cannot be modified or set aside without the consent of the parties thereto, except for fraud or mutual mistake, and the proper procedure to vacate such judgment is by an independent action ....
In Webster v. Webster, 213 N.C. 135, 195 S.E. 362 (1938), the parties entered into a consent judgment whereby the defendant (father) agreed to pay $20 per month for the support of a child born of the marriage of the parties during the time the child was in the custody of the plaintiff (mother). The judgment provided that the plaintiff would have custody of the child except for one week out of each month when the defendant would have custody. Thereafter the plaintiff left the child with the defendant for a total of twenty weeks during a thirty-three week period and the defendant refused to make the support payments during the twenty-week period. The plaintiff began contempt proceedings against the defendant. The trial court, while refusing to hold the defendant in contempt, modified the earlier consent judgment by requiring the defendant to pay $20 per month to the plaintiff irrespective of who had custody of the child. On appeal this Court held that the trial court had no power to modify the agreement in this manner. The Court said, 213 N.C. at 138, 195 S.E. at 364:
To hold, as ruled by the court below, that the defendant is bound to pay the full amount of $20.00 per month for the care of the child, whether the plaintiff keeps the child any part of the time or not, would seem to impose upon the defendant an obligation which he did not assume, and result in the requirement of additional payments for the sole benefit of the plaintiff, with whom a complete settlement has been had. This cannot be held to have been in contemplation of the parties or in accord with their intent.
The judgment of the Superior Court must be reversed with directions that defendant be required to pay to the plaintiff only such sums as may be found to be due her for the support of the child when kept by her in substantial compliance with the agreement, as evidenced by the consent judgment, and not for periods during which the plaintiff may have voluntarily relinquished the custody and support of the child to the defendant in excess of the time specified.
*391Provisions for the payment of true alimony in consent judgments may, of course, be modified because modifiability is an inherent attribute of alimony, G.S. 50-16.9; White v. White, supra; Bunn v. Bunn, supra. The modifiability of alimony cannot be destroyed even by the parties’ agreement because such an agreement is against public policy. Rowe v. Rowe, supra. The parties’ agreement to make periodic payments other than alimony, however, must be enforced according to the terms of their agreement; and, like other provisions of the agreement, may not be modified if the terms of the agreement indicate the parties did not intend modification. White v. White, supra; Bunn v. Bunn, supra.
Modifiability, however, is not a prerequisite to enforceability of a consent judgment by contempt. Henderson v. Henderson (No. 100PA82, filed 11 January 1983). The judgment is enforceable by contempt not because it is modifiable, but because it is a judgment. Likewise, if the parties so agree, it is not modifiable because it is also a contract. I would also hold that enforceability by contempt is an attribute of a judgment that the parties may not change by agreement. Such an agreement would, like an agreement not to modify alimony payments, be against public policy and unenforceable.
Just as the parties cannot deprive the court of its power to enforce a consent judgment by contempt, neither can the court modify an agreement of the parties without their consent unless the agreement is unenforceable as against public policy.
The majority’s holding today does not only overrule Bunn v. Bunn, supra; it also overrules King v. King, supra, Webster v. Webster, supra, and I suppose a legion of other cases which adhere to the principle that consent judgments, being in part a contract of the parties, cannot ordinarily be modified without the parties’ consent. The effect of today’s ruling is to preclude parties in domestic cases from settling their dispute in a manner satisfactory to them, agreeing on the terms of the settlement, having their agreement treated like other ordinary contracts, yet at the same time making the agreement enforceable pursuant to the contempt powers of the court by putting the agreement in the form of a consent judgment. Not only is the majority’s decision in conflict with all the cases which have heretofore spoken on the *392subject, I am satisfied the rule it announces is unwise, if not practically unworkable.
I vote to affirm the Court of Appeals.

 By the term “consent judgment,” I mean to refer only to those judgments in which the court adopts the agreement of parties as its own judgment and, directs performance of the agreement. These are the only kinds of judgments properly called “consent judgments” and the only ones which have caused any difficulty. *389Where a court merely approves the parties’ agreement but does not direct its performance, nothing but a contract results; there is no consent judgment. See Levitch v. Levitch, supra in text; Bunn v. Bunn, supra in text.