Court Opinion

ID: 9761847
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 01:56:55.313583+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:29:27.082556
License: Public Domain

HUTCHINSON, Justice, concurring.
I agree with the majority that the Slayer’s Act, 20 Pa.C.S. §§ 8801-8815, applies, and a proceeding for equitable distribution must continue if the slayer would, in fact, otherwise obtain a benefit. However, I believe non-abatement is better reached on the alternate, general ground that equitable distribution does not end upon the death of one party to a divorce action.
The majority’s rationale implies a case by case inquiry as to who will benefit from a continuation of equitable distribution when one spouse slays another during divorce. Under this analysis, equitable distribution will sometimes abate and sometimes continue, even when one spouse kills the other. To solve the abatement puzzle the equitable distribution factfinder will have to decide .who benefits, the slayer or his victim. The alternate ground avoids this difficulty. It also avoids any later inquiry into the parties’ relative fault if the action is abated. Such an inquiry is possible not only when there is a slayer who would have benefited from a continuance, but whenever a death occurs during a divorce action. That inquiry into fault would *439violate the major premise of our Divorce Code, Act of April 2, 1980, P.L. 63, No. 26, as amended, 23 P.S. §§ 101-801 (Supp.1987).
Under the Code, property is to be distributed upon dissolution of a marriage in a fair and equitable manner, without regard to fault. Abating an equitable distribution claim on one party’s death throws the survivor back into the Probate, Estates and Fiduciaries Code for economic protection. It involves notions of fault. See 20 Pa.C.S. § 2106(a) (spouse who has “willfully and maliciously deserted the other spouse” has no right or interest in that spouse’s real or personal estate for purposes of intestate succession); 20 Pa.C.S. § 2208 (surviving spouse who would not be entitled to a share of an intestate decedent’s estate under 20 Pa.C.S. § 2106 has no right of election). This is contrary to the policies in our Divorce Code; it involves fault and neither fosters economic justice nor considers the welfare of the family.
Under our Divorce Code, whether the marital relationship has in fact dissolved, and thus whether the marital bond should be severed and property equitably distributed, is solemnly answered at the outset by the party beginning the action, subject only to formal recognition by the court at its conclusion. On the death of a party, we should recognize the acknowledgment that dissolution of the relationship had already occurred, and divide the marital property equitably. If we, instead, abate equitable distribution, we may deprive the surviving spouse of property by the very inquiry which our Divorce Code was meant to avoid.
I recognize the Divorce Code fails to speak expressly on abatement. In favor of abatement is a lingering common law notion that personal actions do not survive and that death resolves all questions of status. If marriage is to be treated as a partnership, as I believe the Divorce Code implies, equitable distribution of the couple’s marital property when one dies is no less needed than equitable distribution of partnership property on the death of a partner. This position is in accord with the policies expressed in the Divorce Code and is a logical extension of the analysis this *440Court has employed with respect to partition of entireties property. See Clingerman v. Sadowski, 513 Pa. 179, 519 A.2d 378 (1986). See also id., 513 Pa. at 192, 519 A.2d at 385 (McDermott and Hutchinson, JJ., concurring).