Court Opinion

ID: 9671839
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 03:43:51.812494+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:16:12.403957
License: Public Domain

D. SCOTT FURKIN, Special Justice,
dissenting.
Respectfully, I dissent. I believe the Court of Appeals arrived at the right result via the wrong route. This Court charted a proper course but nevertheless went astray.
I acknowledge that Chapman v. Chapman, Ky., 498 S.W.2d 134 (1973), does permit trial courts to consider marital misconduct for the limited purpose of setting the amount of a spouse’s maintenance award after entitlement to maintenance has been established. There is much to be said for the view that evidence of misconduct has no rightful place in a no-fault divorce system; but unless and until Chapman is overruled, its holding prevails. Still, marital misconduct is but one factor to be considered in setting the amount of maintenance and should ordinarily be used to reduce an otherwise appropriate award only when necessary to prevent a windfall.
I also acknowledge that an appellate court should not disturb a trial court’s factual finding unless that finding is clearly erroneous. However, when the finding is palpably against the clear weight of the evidence, it is both an appellate court’s prerogative and duty to reverse it in order to prevent an injustice.
With these principles in mind, I turn to what I see as the only real issue in this case: Did the appellee sustain her burden of proving that she suffered from a mental disease or condition sufficient to excuse her admitted marital misconduct? Based on the evidence in this record, I believe she did.
The appellee’s treating psychiatrist testified that she suffers from multiple personality disorder (MPD), a dissociative disorder recognized by the American Psychiatric Association in which complex behaviors take place outside the awareness of the patient’s predominant consciousness and are completely forgotten by the patient afterward. He diagnosed the appellee’s MPD while she was hospitalized for depression and suicidal ideation, and he had treated her with individual and group psychotherapy for over two years at the time of his testimony.
He explained that during therapy the ap-pellee exhibited at least thirteen different alter personalities, many of whom were demonstrated on videotape, which came out in full control of her ego. While the appellee had shown improvement during the course of her treatment, according to his testimony she still had psychogenic memory loss, switched involuntarily to alter personalities and was very inconsistent in her behavior. Nevertheless, he was hopeful that with continued therapy she would be able to “fuse” all her alter personalities within three to five years.
A qualified psychiatrist retained by the appellant to evaluate the appellee also testified in the trial court. Although he allowed that MPD is “somewhat controversial in psychiatry,” he conceded that it is a recognized dissociative disorder. More importantly, he concurred that the appellee does suffer from MPD as well as anxiety, depression and dependency. Based on his one-hour evaluation which occurred after the appellee was well into her treatment, he opined that she may *327have some control over switching into alter personalities at the same time acknowledging that she lacked some control. The only real substantive difference between his conclusions and those of the appellee’s psychiatrist had to do with the therapeutic value of her being employed.
The testimony of the parties’ experts is strikingly similar. The only medical evidence before the trial court leads inescapably to the conclusion that at the time of her marital misconduct the appellee was seriously mentally ill. In my view, both the trial court and this Court have given undue emphasis to whether the appellee lacks all control over her “switching.” As observed by the Court of Appeals: “Regardless of the amount of ‘control’ [the appellee] had over ‘switching,’ the evidence in this record, particularly that of the expert witnesses, established that a mentally healthy person cannot switch from one personality to another....”
Nevertheless, I believe that the standard of proof for excuse of fault adopted by the Court of Appeals — mere establishment of a “causal link” between a spouse’s misconduct and his or her mental condition — is insufficient. To this extent, I agree with this Court that a spouse resisting reduction of an otherwise appropriate maintenance award must show by a preponderance of the evidence that by virtue of a mental disease or condition, he or she was unable to appreciate the wrongfulness of his or her conduct. This is the standard of proof enunciated by the Supreme Court of South Carolina in Rutherford, v. Rutherford, 307 S.C. 199, 414 S.E.2d 157 (1992).
I part company with this Court only over its holding that the appellee has failed to sustain her burden of establishing a mental disease or condition sufficient to excuse her marital misconduct. As I have indicated, the proof is overwhelming in this regard. For many years, Kentucky law has refused to withhold deserved maintenance from a spouse due to marital misconduct attributable to mental illness. See, e.g., Snider v. Snider, Ky., 302 S.W.2d 621 (1957). The most unfortunate result of the Majority’s decision in this ease that is it condones punishment for mental illness. In my opinion, this is a step in the wrong direction and is entirely at odds with the rehabilitative purpose of our maintenance statute.
I would reverse so much of the Court of Appeals’ decision as concerns the standard of proof, but affirm its remand of the case to the trial court for determination of a proper maintenance award without consideration of the appellee’s marital misconduct.