Court Opinion

ID: 9745903
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-27 13:41:45.84207+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:25:06.167611
License: Public Domain

JUSTICE MYERSCOUGH, dissenting: I respectfully dissent. I would reverse the trial court’s award of maintenance as an abuse of discretion. Mary Anne was clearly entitled to additional maintenance. She contributed and sacrificed 33 years of her life as wife, mother, and campaign worker. She now has a much lower present and future earning capacity, unmet needs, greater age, lesser physical and emotional capabilities, and lowered standard of living. Moreover, she has clearly made a good-faith effort to support herself. The trial court erroneously criticized Mary Anne’s expenditures and cast a blind eye on Charles’s affidavit and testimony. Mary Anne’s estimates were just as realistic as Charles’s. The court refused to require Charles to sell assets but required Mary Anne to do so. Charles was ordered to pay Meghan’s college expenses of $2,900 to $3,400 per month to Wellesley plus expenses such as medical and travel. Even so, Charles will have substantially more disposable income during his working and retirement years than Mary Anne. At a minimum, Mary Anne should have received $3,750-per-month maintenance with the responsibility of paying one half of Meghan’s expenses. Although Illinois law does not require an equalization of net disposable income in large-income cases (Claydon, 306 Ill. App. 3d at 902, 715 N.E.2d at 1205-06), the needs of the parties must still be met where possible. While this couple did not five an extravagant lifestyle so they could afford to send their children to college, they enjoyed substantial income, which should not be retained in large part by Charles, especially where, here, it was because of Mary Anne’s sacrifices and significant contributions to the family during the parties’ long marriage that Charles is able to have a greater earning capacity than does Mary Anne. As the majority points out “[i]t is inequitable upon dissolution to saddle a party with the burden of her reduced earning potential and to allow the other party to continue in the advantageous position he reached through their joint efforts” (344 Ill. App. 3d at 792), and that is what the trial court did in this case. For these reasons, the trial court’s award was contrary to the manifest weight of the evidence and an abuse of discretion, and I would reverse.