Court Opinion

ID: 9675780
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 05:05:45.620674+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:16:39.113838
License: Public Domain

TATE, Justice
(concurring in part and dissenting in part).
I respectfully dissent from the opinion of the majority, insofar as it disallows the award of attorney’s fees to the wife, who was granted alimony for her support in accordance with her prayer.
Citing Tanner v. Tanner, 229 La. 399, 86 So.2d 80, attorney’s fees were disallowed herein on the ground that at the time the divorce suit wag filed there was no community property. I respectfully suggest that the Tanner case, although containing some expressions which might be construed to favor such a conclusion, is actually authority only for its holding that the community is regarded as dissolved as of the date of judgment of separation, rather than as of the date the petition was filed, and that for this reason the wife’s attorney’s fees incurred after the filing of the petition were a community liability.
The Tanner case, however, also specifically recognized the jurisprudence following Benedict v. Holmes, 104 La. 528, 29 So. 256, and Gosserand v. Monteleone, 159 La. 316, 105 So. 356, 42 A.L.R. 310, to the effect “that the wife’s right to employ counsel in her suit for separation or divorce was a barren one, and she was practically without remedy, if her attorney’s fees could not be charged against the community”, 229 La. 407, 86 So.2d 83. By the same reasoning, the right of an impecunious wife to obtain alimony for her support when rightfully due under LSA-Civil Code, Article 160 is a barren remedy unless she is entitled to recognition of her attorney’s fees for obtaining such alimony as a community obligation incident to dissolution of the community. See, e. g., Jones v. Jones, 200 La. 911, 9 So.2d 227; Martin v. Martin, 191 La. 761, 186 So. 94. Otherwise, the impecunious wife who has not means enough even for her own maintenance and is thus entitled to alimony if she is without fault, Art. 160, must permit her husband’s suit against her on the ground of two year’s separation to go by default, unless she can obtain an attorney who will devote his services without charge to secure recognition of her legal right to support.
Thus, if these attorney’s fees are indeed a community obligation, the fact that there are no community assets with which to pay them is immaterial. The marriage partners are “equally liable for their share of the debts contracted during the marriage, and not acquitted at the time of its dissolution”. LSA-Civil Code, Article 2409. (The wife, *130however, has the privilege of exonerating herself from the debts contracted during the marriage by renouncing the partnership or community of gains. LSA-Civil Code, Articles 2410, 2411.)
The husband is no less liable for an unpaid attorney’s fee incurred during the existence of the community than he is for an unpaid grocery bill. The fact that he has no assets with which to pay community liabilities may render him judgment proof, but it does not destroy his liability to acquit these community debts.
For the foregoing reasons, I respectfully dissent.