Court Opinion

ID: 9597626
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 01:01:08.01795+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:02:00.852232
License: Public Domain

Hill, J.
(dissenting) — Whatever may be the Washington law as to a father’s right of contribution against the mother for support and maintenance he has furnished to their children, it has never before been applied to such a state of facts as that presently before us. Here, a father who left his wife in New York, taking four of the five minor children with him to Michigan and later bringing one of them to Washington, and concealing his and their whereabouts from her during the entire period that he furnished maintenance and support for them, is held to have a right to contribution from her for half of that maintenance and support. There is no other case anywhere so holding.
The majority is concerned about its inability to determine who abandoned whom in the state of New York. There is, however, no doubt as to who left the community where the family resided. There is no doubt as to who spirited away four of the children from that community. There is no doubt as to who concealed his own and the children’s whereabouts during all of the years that he supported and maintained them. And those undisputed facts are sufficient, in my opinion, to provide the answer to the question of the father’s right to contribution for the support of those children. (I place no emphasis upon the fact that the husband left New York with the woman who was or who thereupon became his paramour, except as it bears upon the issue of abandonment.)
The rule should be, and I believe is, that, as between a father and a mother, either parent’s obligation to contribute to the support and maintenance furnished by the other to their child or children is suspended during such time as the parent from whom contribution is sought is wrongfully deprived of the custody of the child or children in question, or *396during any period that the children’s whereabouts are wrongfully concealed. Such a holding finds adequate support in the cases. White v. White (1951), 138 Conn. 1, 81 A. (2d) 450 — husband held not liable for expenditures made by wife for support and maintenance of child during period that he was wrongfully deprived of custody, even though he knew where the child was; In re Sheldon (1936), 248 App. Div. 423, 290 N. Y. S. 80 — same situation as in White v. White, supra. Such cases are necessarily limited in number, because few women have the effrontery to take their children and wrongfully conceal their whereabouts from the father and then ask contribution for their support and maintenance. The instant case, where the father took the children and wrongfully concealed their whereabouts from the mother and now asks contribution from her for their support and maintenance during the period of such concealment, is sui generis.
Since I conclude that the husband’s right to contribution is nonexistent in this case, it becomes necessary to consider his other defense, i.e., that the New York judgment was fraudulently procured as to him.
While temporarily in the state of New York, the former husband was served in a suit commenced in that state by his former wife to recover money she had spent in rearing the youngest child of the parties, the only one of the five children he left behind him when he left the state. Within a day or two after the service on him, he returned to the state of Washington, but with the understanding that his brother in New York would see his former wife and tell her that the summons had been served upon him, the brother. This the brother did, and at that time she conceded that, if the papers had been served on the brother as he claimed, she could not prosecute the action against her former husband. The evidence does not support the finding of the trial court that she promised not to prosecute the action if service had been obtained upon her former husband. She did proceed with the action, taking a. default and.securing a judgment in the amount of $7,579. The claim that the New York judgment *397was procured by fraud has not even a shadow of substance.
The former wife, appellant here, was entitled to maintain an action in Kitsap county on the New York judgment. As the former husband, respondent here, has no real defense and no legitimate counterclaim or offset, the judgment of the trial court in his favor should be reversed, with instructions to enter judgment for the appellant for the amount of her judgment, together with interest and costs.