Court Opinion

ID: 9746658
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-27 14:32:16.049796+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:37:52.183065
License: Public Domain

SPAETH, Judge,
concurring:
I agree with the result reached by Judge HOFFMAN, and join in much of what he says. I offer this opinion because I believe that our decision need not rest on reading the complaint as not implying that sexual intercourse was a part of the consideration. If the experience of other states is any guide, we may expect to see an increasing number of cases involving various types of non-marital contracts. It is therefore particularly important that we make clear the standards to be used in determining whether such a contract is in violation of our public policy and hence unenforcible.
In her complaint appellant alleges that appellee said that if she would quit her job, which she had held for more than thirty years, and be available to spend time with him and travel with him during the week, he would take care of her for the rest of her life. Appellant further alleges that in reliance on appellee’s promise, she did quit her job and appellee subsequently moved into her house and for a period of several months paid many of her expenses and gave her *506approximately $500 a month, but that he then moved out of the house and stopped providing financial support.
The lower court characterized the contract thus pleaded as a contract “to take care of [appellant] in exchange for meretricious sexual services and nothing else.” Slip op. at 4. The facts pleaded in the complaint — and these were the only facts properly before the lower court — do not support this characterization of the contract. Not only was the court not free to ignore the facts as pleaded but on demurrer it was obliged to take them as true. Gekas v. Shapp, 469 Pa. 1, 364 A.2d 691 (1976). As Judge HOFFMAN points out, there is no allegation in the complaint of a sexual relationship between the parties — much less any allegation that the contract was for “sexual services and nothing else.” The question remains, however, whether on a fair reading, the allegations of the complaint imply that sexual intercourse was part of the consideration for the contract.
The lower court relied on the Restatement of Contracts § 589 (1932). According to the Restatement, if illicit sexual intercourse is any part of the consideration for a contract, the contract is tmenforcible. However, section 589 goes on to state, in a portion not quoted by the lower court, that the fact of intercourse between the parties to a contract is not by itself enough to invalidate the contract. The key question for the Restatement is whether or not the intercourse forms any part of the consideration.1 Here, since there is no allegation that intercourse did form any part of the consideration, Judge HOFFMAN reads the complaint as alleging, *507in effect, that intercourse did not form any part of the consideration. Given this reading of the complaint, there can be no question that it pleaded an enforcible contract.
I concede that this approach is consistent with the principle that on demurrer, a complaint must be read most favorably to the pleader. Gekas v. Shapp, supra. However, I am not convinced that it was necessary to go so far to protect appellant’s interests, even on demurrer.
One way that courts over the years have limited the impact of the “any part of the consideration” language in the Restatement has been by finding two separate agreements, one for sexual intercourse and unenforcible, the other based on other consideration and enforcible. E. g., Trutalli v. Meraviglia, 215 Cal. 698, 12 P.2d 430 (1932). See Bruch, Property Rights of De Facto Spouses, Including Thoughts on the Value of Homemakers’ Services, 10 Fam.L.Q. 101 (1976). This line of cases stands behind the language in Marvin v. Marvin, 18 Cal.3d 660, 557 P.2d 106, 134 Cal.Rptr. 815 (1976), and Kozlowski v. Kozlowski, 80 N.J. 378, 403 A.2d 902 (1979), to the effect that express agreements should be enforced except to the extent that they are expressly and inseparably founded on sexual services. See also our very recent case, Baldassari v. Baldassari, 278 Pa.Super. 312, 420 A.2d 556 (1980).2
In reality, it seems unlikely that apart from a contract for prostitution, many contracts will be found where there is express mention of sexual services. In a way, then, by focusing on the words, cases like Marvin and Kozlowski avoid what in many instances will be the clearly implied substance of a contract. I therefore prefer the approach taken by the Supreme Court in Oregon in Latham v. Latham, 274 Or. 421, 547 P.2d 144 (1976). In that case the court acknowledged that sexual intercourse was a part of the consideration but refused to deny enforcement “where *508consideration was not restricted to sexual intercourse but contemplated all of the burdens and other amenities of married life.” Id. at 427, 547 P.2d at 147. To me, the importance of Latham is the court’s willingness to look at the contract as a whole, without closing its eyes to what was clearly implied, or making the result depend on whether the sexual aspect of the contract was “express” or “separable.”
I should like to offer two other comments. First, although I agree with Judge HOFFMAN that appellant has pleaded an enforcible contract, I think it should be noted that the damages she pleads do not follow from the breach she pleads. The breach she pleads is that appellee broke his promise to take care of her for the rest of her life. The damages she pleads are not life-time support but lost wages, lost medical benefits, and reduced pension benefits. Second, although I agree with Judge HOFFMAN’s analysis of why the contract should not be denied enforcement as tending to facilitate a divorce, strictly speaking, we need not reach that issue, for the complaint does not allege that appellee is married. To be sure, the demurrer alleges that he is, but that simply makes it a “speaking demurrer.” Satchell v. Insurance Placement Facility of Pennsylvania, 241 Pa.Super. 287, 361 A.2d 375 (1976).
For the foregoing reasons, I concur in the majority’s decision that the order of the lower court should be reversed.

. Section 589 is part of Topic 10, Bargains Concerning Domestic Relations, in Chapter 18, Illegal Bargains. In the tentative draft of the Restatement Second this topic has been retitled “Impairment of Family Relations.” Restatement of Contracts Second (tent, draft No. 12, March 1, 1977). Nothing in the new Topic 3 corresponds to the old section 589. The introductory note to Topic 3 observes that “[t]his area of law is currently one of reassessment and change, particularly noticeable in connection with the law relating to divorce and to the rights of women. The rules stated in this Topic are intended to meet current needs and are therefore illustrative rather than exhaustive in their content and are flexible rather than rigid in their statement.” Id. at 129. In light of this position of the drafters of the Restatement Second, we should be particularly careful not to apply section 589 mechanically, or uncritically.

. The New York Court of Appeals has also just reiterated that for it the key to the enforceability of an express contract between unmarried persons living together is that “illicit sexual relations were not ‘part of the consideration of the contract.’ ” Morone v. Morone, 50 N.Y.2d 481, 407 N.E.2d 438, 429 N.Y.S.2d 592 (1980).