Court Opinion

ID: 9442556
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-03 18:51:32.057308+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:29:07.960989
License: Public Domain

EDGERTON, Circuit Judge
(dissenting).
The present agreement between the parties to the former marriage replaced, ultimately, an agreement they made after they separated and before they were divorced. I think the present agreement, like its predecessors, is incidental to the separation and divorce. If so it is “incident to such divorce or separation.” I think the court errs in holding that the words of the statute, “under such decree or under a written instrument incident to such divorce or separation” [italics added], mean no more than quite different words, “under such decree or under a written instrument incident to such decree" would have meant. The latter words, which Congress chose not to use, would have expressed the meaning this court attributes to the former words, which Congress did use. Congress chose to cover not only payments provided for in a decree, or enforceable under a decree, but also other payments “in discharge of * * * a legal obligation * * * incurred * * * under a written instrument incident to such divorce or separation.”
As to the word alimony, I think it narrower, not broader, than the words Congress used. Alimony would not clearly, if at all, cover payments made under the present agreement, for that word connotes payments provided for in a decree or enforceable under a decree. The phrase “incident to such divorce or separation” has no such limited connotation.