Court Opinion

ID: 9844696
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-24 03:06:50.327873+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:15:40.194538
License: Public Domain

ALMA WILSON, Justice,
dissenting:
The linchpin of the majority opinion is the term “vested.” The majority uses the term ten times within the opinion. If support alimony is not a vested right, the structure of the argument collapses.
In analyzing the phrase “vested right,” the case of Nantz v. Nantz, 749 P.2d 1137, 1140 (Okla.1988), cited an earlier opinion of this Court that held a right is vested when the right of enjoyment, present or prospective, has become the property of some particular person or persons as a present interest. Baker v. Tulsa Building & Loan Ass’n, 179 Okl. 432, 66 P.2d 45, 48 (1937). This Court concluded in the Nantz opinion that because support alimony was terminable and modifiable, the right is not vested at the time of the decree, but only at the time each payment becomes due.
That this result has long been contemplated is reflected in the case of Stanfield v. Stanfield, 67 Okl. 56, 168 P. 912, 914 (1917). That case holds:
Alimony decreed to a wife in a divorce is as much a debt, until the decree is recalled or modified, as any judgment for money is, and there is authority to the effect that the decree in favor of Mrs. Stanfield operated to cause an indebtedness to arise in her favor as each installment of alimony fell due.
(Emphasis added.) The majority opinion cites Stanfield as support for its declaration equating a judgment for support alimony to a money judgment. The paragraph quoted above clearly shows that exceptions are contemplated.
In spite of the attempt of the majority to equate orders for support alimony to money judgments, case law to the contrary exists:
[A]n order for the payment of alimony possesses different characteristics from an ordinary debt since it is designed to secure the performance of a legal duty in which the public has an interest.
Grattan v. Tillman, 323 P.2d 982, 984 (Okla.1957), quoting Commons v. Bragg, 183 Okl. 122, 80 P.2d 287, 290 (1938).
The fact that this Court has held that the public has an interest in assuring adequate support for divorced spouses, and that decrees for support alimony are only the equivalent of money judgments to the ex*875tent that an installment has become due, should make it clear that such orders in divorce decrees do not represent “vested rights” as judgments for money represent such rights.
The majority opinion attempts to confine Nantz to its facts when in fact, the majority opinion is overruling Nantz. In spite of the attempts to reconcile the two opinions, they can be neither reconciled nor distinguished. Nantz holds that divorce decrees containing orders for support alimony do not represent vested rights. The majority opinion in the case at bar holds to the contrary. Nantz holds that a party receiving support alimony can have only a settled expectation of continued support, and to be consistent, the party paying the support could have only a settled expectation of continuing to pay a certain amount. The majority opinion in the case at bar holds that the payment amount is constitutionally shielded, “impervious and invulnerable to tinkering by after-enacted legislation.” A review of the dissent to Nantz reveals that the case at bar is simply the Nantz dissent revisited. If nothing else is clear, it should be clear that these two cases are incompatible and should be granted a divorce by explicitly declaring Nantz to be overruled.
Concerning the asserted “Clifton Bar” I have already expressed my views of that opinion in the dissent. Clifton v. Clifton, 801 P.2d 693, 698 (Okla.1990). The sections of the majority opinion in the case at bar addressing Clifton regarding property division awards, and those sections of the majority opinion addressing support alimony awards can best be summarized by stating that what the United States Congress has provided in the Uniformed Services Former Spouse’s Protection Act, and what the legislature of the State of Oklahoma has enacted in 12 O.S.Supp.1987, § 1289, the Supreme Court of Oklahoma has vetoed by judicial fiat. The Clifton case and the majority opinion in the case at bar have effectively killed the Nantz case by bleeding away the legal rationale upon which Nantz was based. Accordingly, I respectfully dissent.