Court Opinion

ID: 9764448
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 03:22:48.142266+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:29:56.887100
License: Public Domain

Morse, J.,
dissenting.* I cannot agree with the Court’s conclusion that 15 V.S.A. § 752(a) does not provide a court with *246authority to award postmortem maintenance payments absent an agreement. I find no language in 15 V.S.A. § 752 limiting the family court’s discretion in fashioning an order to achieve equitable results. The statute is silent on the possibility for maintenance from the former spouse’s estate. The Court’s construction of the statute injects a prohibition that simply does not exist. See Johnson v. Johnson, 155 Vt. 36, 42, 580 A.2d 503, 507 (1990) (remarriage, unmentioned in § 752, does not terminate maintenance as a matter of law).
In my view, the sounder approach is to focus on what the law does say, rather than on what it does not. Vermont’s statute on maintenance allows a court to “order either spouse to make maintenance payments, either rehabilitative or permanent in nature, to the other spouse.” 15 V.S.A. § 752(a) (emphasis added). An order for maintenance “shall be ... for such periods of time as the court deems just, after considering all relevant factors,” including the factors listed in 15 V.S.A. § 752(b)(l)-(7). 15 V.S.A. § 752(b). What could be simpler? The Court’s reasoning runs counter to the statute’s purposes and plain meaning, and the holding narrows the enactment by judicial amendment.
Not too long ago we held that a medical degree, with its attendant earning capacity, is not marital property under 15 V.S.A. § 751. Downs v. Downs, 154 Vt. 161, 165, 574 A.2d 156, 158 (1990). Yet in Downs we recognized that Vermont’s maintenance statute, § 752, is “sufficiently flexible” to allow a court to consider future earning prospects of the student spouse. Id. at 166, 574 A.2d at 159. After today’s decision, § 752 is not as flexible as I had thought, and I find no compelling reason to restrict a flexible approach.
The explicit, specified, statutory criteria are eviscerated to give effect to a criterion not expressed in the statute at all. All seven of the statute’s “relevant factors” are defeated to enhance the inheritance of a second family, a factor nowhere mentioned in the statute. In fact, today’s ruling reduces the receipt of § 752 maintenance, permanent or rehabilitative, to a mere gamble contingent upon the vicissitude of an untimely death. I cannot believe the Legislature intended such misfortune.
The facts here — emphasized for effect but irrelevant to the holding — are not a particularly compelling foundation on which to build a permanent maintenance award. Yet, there are sitúa*247tions that would be compelling. For instance, suppose the wife in a thirty-year marriage had been the homemaker and chief caretaker for the children rather than pursuing a more economically gainful career. Suppose also that, at the time of divorce, the husband had a medical condition preventing him from procuring life insurance and his wife’s life expectancy was significantly greater than his. Given the inflexibility of today’s ruling, it would indeed tax a family court’s imagination to protect the wife from taking an economic plunge should the husband die and maintenance stop. Perhaps a trust could be established with marital assets. See Naumann v. Kurz, 152 Vt. 355, 357-58, 566 A.2d 1342, 1343 (1989) (trust created from which spouse requesting maintenance received income). Transferring a disproportionately larger share of marital property to the wife, however, may not be a fair way to protect her for the reason put forth by the Court in prohibiting postmortem maintenance— the husband’s potential estate would be reduced by an unfair imbalance in assets distributed to the parties. Even if insurance on the husband’s life for the benefit of the wife were possible, today’s holding puts that alternative in doubt as an artful ploy to bypass the lack of authority to grant postmortem maintenance. See Choker v. Choker, 155 Vt. 20, 23-24, 581 A.2d 737, 739 (1990) (provision requiring husband to maintain wife as sole beneficiary of life insurance policy unchallenged); Quesnel v. Quesnel, 150 Vt. 149, 152, 549 A.2d 644, 647 (1988) (where insurance policy is already in effect, court has authority to order insured party to maintain policy for benefit of spouse).
No rationale supports the reading that a permanent award of maintenance ends, as a matter of law, when the obligor dies long before his time, and the one in need lives on. In fact, as one commentator has pointed out, this rule “basically penalizes women because they statistically live longer than men.” Note, Alimony, Till Death Do Us Part, 27 J. Fam. L. 859, 860 (1989). No word or phrase in § 752, no policy, no rule of statutory construction, justifies such a senseless outcome.
The Court’s primary rationale for its position rests on factor (6): “the ability of the spouse from whom maintenance is sought to meet his or her reasonable needs while meeting those of the spouse seeking maintenance.” According to the Court, this indicates that “the legislature assumed the payments would be *248coming from the obligor personally rather than from the estate.” But that assumption is just as farfetched as the assumption that a property distribution under § 751 must be accomplished before a party dies, or it is lost.
Furthermore, the Court’s comparison of § 752 with the Uniform Marriage and Divorce Act explains little about the underlying legislative intent. The Legislature’s failure to adopt § 316(b), which states that the obligation to pay maintenance terminates upon the death of either party unless the parties agree, or the court expressly orders, cannot be a basis for concluding that Vermont’s statute, allowing for permanent maintenance, does not authorize awards of postmortem maintenance. If any significance is given to the failure of the Legislature to adopt § 316(b), the stronger logical inference is that permanent maintenance extends beyond the death of the obligor when no time limit is specified in the judgment. Otherwise, following the Court’s reasoning to its logical extreme would result in a prohibition on postmortem maintenance even when the parties agree to it.
In my view, Vermont law on domestic relations provides ample guidance in determining the goals of the Legislature. The factors contained in § 752 guide the court in examining the parties’ present and potential financial situation, based on their resources, abilities and needs, in fashioning a maintenance award. 15 V.S.A. § 752(b)(l)-(2),(5)-(6). This consideration also provides recompense for the nonfinancial contributions of a homemaker to the family’s well-being, and promotes financial status quo by allowing the parties to achieve the same standard of living established during marriage. Klein v. Klein, 150 Vt. 466, 474, 555 A.2d 382, 387 (1988); see 15 V.S.A. § 752(b)(3)-(4). In sum, the statutory scheme protects the divorcing spouse with the lower income-producing capability from suffering a disproportionately diminished life-style after divorce. The Court, however, dilutes this protection and eliminates it in some cases. We have legislated out of existence a measure of protection the Legislature intended to include for the least economically viable party after divorce.
The Court acknowledges that there are “policy considerations both in favor of and against post-mortem maintenance.” Nevertheless, it opts for the rule that prefers potential benefici*249aries of the payor’s estate over the real needs and deserved benefits of a living ex-spouse in every case, rather than balancing those policy considerations on a case-by-case basis. The statutory scheme, however, does not seek to apportion financial equity according to a hierarchy of people “closest” to the ex-spouse. Although consideration for the payor’s most current family may be one factor in allotting resources, it should not be the only element. If the terms of the divorce order prove to be unduly burdensome, an aggrieved party may bring a motion to modify maintenance under 15 V.S.A. § 758. See Scott v. Scott, 155 Vt. 465, 470, 586 A.2d 1140, 1143 (1990) (“vagaries of the future” adequately addressed by modification procedure); Johnson, 155 Vt. at 42, 580 A.2d at 506 (if period for alimony payments “proves too short or too long, the disadvantaged party can seek modification”). Furthermore, if, at the time of the divorce, there are adequate funds, then mechanisms such as life insurance and annuities should be used to allow periodic disbursement, which would not unduly encumber administration of the estate.
As the Court points out, the decisions from other states are based on an archaic common-law rule that is inconsistent with modern rationales for the award of maintenance. See, e.g., In re Estate of Gustafson, 287 N.W.2d 700, 701 (N.D. 1980) (under common-law, divorced wife retained interest in ex-husband’s estate, justifying termination of maintenance after his death). Thus, we are blindly accepting an outmoded construction of the statute rather than following the wisdom of allowing trial courts to devise equitable outcomes based on all the circumstances. This is regrettable, because the Court’s reliance on unenlightened out-of-state precedent departs from our consistent trend of fostering equitable allocation of resources following divorce. I am reminded of Holmes, The Path of the Law, 10 Harv. L. Rev. 457, 469 (1897), where he said,
It is revolting to have no better reason for a rule of law than that so it was laid down in the time of Henry IV. It is still more revolting if the grounds upon which it was laid down have vanished long since, and the rule simply persists from blind imitation of the past.
*250Because I believe that the statutory authority afforded by 15 V.S.A. § 752 supports the trial court’s ruling, I respectfully dissent. Justice Dooley joins in this dissent.

 Because the majority has held that the court was without authority to continue maintenance beyond the obligor’s death, we need not reach whether it was an abuse of discretion to order maintenance to continue beyond the obligor’s death in this case. Thus, I do not necessarily dissent to the result although I disagree with the reasoning.