Court Opinion

ID: 9595523
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 00:41:19.229521+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:01:28.104455
License: Public Domain

LARSON, Justice.
Dorthy Carlisle appealed from a district court ruling that her surviving-spouse benefits under Iowa Code chapter 633 (1999) had been extinguished by a prior decree of separate maintenance. We disagree and therefore reverse and remand.
I. Facts and Prior Proceedings.
Francis and Dorthy Carlisle had been married for sixty-five years when, in 1998, Dorthy fell and broke her hip. She wanted to install a bathroom on the first floor of their home to accommodate her resulting disability. Francis refused because it would be too expensive to cut into the limestone walls of their home. Dorthy moved in with her daughter. On August 16, 1999, she filed a petition for legal separation and maintenance. Francis answered and counterclaimed for a decree of dissolution. Francis acknowledged that *369his wife “has been a wonderful lady and this action should never have happened.” Nevertheless, he wanted a dissolution because he did not want Dorthy to request more property from him.
On May 23, 2000, the district court entered a decree of separate maintenance. The court’s opinion stated that, “There has not been a breakdown in the marital relationship to the extent that the legitimate objects of matrimony have been destroyed.” (Emphasis added.)
Iowa Code section 598.21(1) provides:
Upon every judgment of annulment, dissolution, or separate maintenance the court shall divide the property of the parties and transfer the title of the property accordingly.
Pursuant to this statute, the court divided the parties’ assets, including their home on thirty-four acres of land, which the court divided as tenants in common. The decree provided that, when Francis was no longer able to reside in the home, it would be sold and the proceeds divided. The decree stated, “Each party shall keep the property currently in their possession free and clear of any claim on behalf of the other.”
Francis died on August 6, 2001, leaving a will dated July 25, 2000. The will specifically excluded Dorthy: “I am purposely making no provision in my Will for my wife, Dorthy L. Carlisle or my daughter, Linda L. Grander, or one of my grandchildren .... ” The executor of Francis’ estate filed this petition for a declaratory ruling to determine Dorthy’s rights in Francis’s estate.
The district court ruled that, following entry of a separate-maintenance decree, Dorthy was not a “surviving spouse” and therefore she (1) could not elect against Francis’s will, Iowa Code § 633.236; (2) could not elect to occupy the homestead as a surviving spouse, Iowa Code § 633.240; and (3) was not entitled to support as a surviving spouse, Iowa Code § 633.374. The court’s opinion stated in part:
It seems illogical for the Decree of Separate Maintenance to divide marital property, to extinguish all rights Dorthy Carlisle had in Francis Carlisle’s resulting separate property, but then to have the interest in their marital property reborn as a result of his death.
II. Disposition.
Francis’s estate and Francis’s niece, as a beneficiary under his will (collectively “the estate”), rely primarily on Iowa Code section 598.20:
When a dissolution of marriage is decreed the parties shall forfeit all rights acquired by marriage which are not specifically preserved in the decree.
According to the estate’s argument, Dorthy lost her spousal rights- under chapter 633 because those rights were not “preserved” in the separate-maintenance decree. We do not agree. Section 598.20 applies by its terms. only to dissolution actions. The estate rejects this interpretation of section- 598.20, arguing that Iowa Code section 598.28 makes section 598.20 applicable to separate-maintenance actions as well as dissolution actions. Section 598.28 provides:
A petition shall be filed in separate maintenance and annulment actions as in actions for dissolution of marriage, and all applicable provisions of this chapter in relation thereto shall apply to separate maintenance and annulment actions.
Section 598.28, however, cannot be given the broad application urged by the estate. The operative words in section 598.28 are “all applicable provisions of this chapter in relations thereto shall apply to separate-*370maintenance ... actions.” Many of the provisions of chapter 598- are necessarily applicable to separate-maintenance actions as well as dissolutions because of the need to provide a detailed procedural framework to a cause of action that previously existed only at common law. See In re Marriage of Kurtz, 199 N.W.2d 312, 314 (Iowa 1972) (“Under the Iowa law before adoption of ... chapter 598 ... a cause of action for separate maintenance was not statutory in contrast to divorce actions.”). We believe the Code sections that are applicable to all dissolution, separate-maintenance, and annulment eases are those that are procedural in nature. See, e.g., Iowa Code § 598.2 (jurisdiction and venue); § 598.4 (caption of petition); § 598.5 (contents of petition); § 598.7 (verification and evidence); § 598.8 (hearing procedures); § 598.9 (residence and failure of proof); § 598.13 (financial statements); and others.
Other sections in chapter 598 are clearly not applicable to separate-maintenance actions. These statutes go beyond procedure and determine substantive rights of the parties. For example, section 598.17 applies by its terms only to dissolution decrees. It applies the requirements of a breakdown of the marriage in order to obtain a dissolution decree. Applying section 598.17 to a separate-maintenance action would be inconsistent with the purpose of section 598.17, which is to terminate the marital relationship as opposed to preserving it in a separate-maintenance action.
Section 598.20, the statute at issue in this case, is another example of a provision that is not applicable to separate-maintenance actions. First, it suggests by its language that a dissolution decree is a condition precedent to application of the statute. It provides “[w]hen a dissolution of marriage is decreed.” (Emphasis added.) In contrast to this limited scope, the legislature could have provided a broad scope to section 598.20, as it did in three subsections of the very next section. Subsection (1) of section 598.21, which is applicable to the division of property, begins: “ Upon every judgment of annulment, dissolution or separate maintenance the court shall divide the property of the parties .... ” (Emphasis added.) Identical language is repeated in subsection (3) dealing with spousal support and subsection (4)(a) dealing with child support.
Further militating against the application of section 598.20 to separate-maintenance decrees is the fact that this section does not mention any rights that would be forfeited under chapter 633. We believe if the legislature had intended to cut off rights of a surviving spouse that are provided by chapter 633, it would have at least referred to that chapter and would not have left it to implication by the interpretation of a dissolution provision in another chapter of the Code. In order for us to say the wife is not entitled to the benefits of a surviving spouse, we would have to say, as the district court did, that “Dorthy Carlisle is not a surviving spouse.” We do not believe that is correct.
We conclude that Dorthy Carlisle is a surviving spouse for purposes of chapter 633, and she did not lose those rights by reason of section 598.20 through a separate-maintenance action. Accordingly, we reverse the judgment of the district court and remand for entry of an order applying this ruling.
REVERSED AND REMANDED.
All justices concur except TERNUS and CADY, JJ., and LAVORATO, C.J., who dissent.