Court Opinion

ID: 9775429
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 18:58:24.373987+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:32:26.191775
License: Public Domain

MANFORD, Judge,
dissenting.
I must dissent.
Since this case has been under submission for a great length of time, I will not further its delay by any long account of the facts or any profound legal thesis designed to support a preconceived desired result as has been followed in the majority opinion.
The majority opinion follows the rule announced by this court in Cregan v. Clark, 658 S.W.2d 924 (Mo.App.1983). I submit that the rule in Cregan is wrong for and upon the reasons set forth in the dissent in Cregan by the late Hon. Ronald Somer-ville. The rule in Cregan should be renounced.
It should be declared that abatement did occur, and the varied interests of the parties should be adjudged according to that principle of law. What has happened herein, as it did in Cregan, is that this court has continued an estate by the entireties past the date of the contract of marriage. The marriage is the very basis upon which such property estate exists. Since the majority herein, as it did in Cregan, chooses to ignore the time-honored status of estates in property, I am not certain if anyone knows or will know the property status of parties to dissolution proceedings in the future.
On another note, the majority opinion does not address the problem presented by the trial court’s failure to rule appellant’s motion to quash the enforcement of the temporary maintenance award. If that had been sustained, how could have the result described in the majority opinion regarding temporary maintenance ever been supported?
As to the matter of the temporary maintenance, the majority opinion relies upon the case of Smith v. Smith, 176 S.W.2d 647 (Mo.App.1944), for the profound statement, *476“an order for the wife’s temporary support ... remains in effect until ... a final determination of the principal case on the merits.” The only problem with reliance upon Smith is that Smith presents just the opposite result that the majority seeks herein. In Smith, the wife was given temporary allowances. The trial court found against the wife on the issue of separate maintenance. She filed a motion for new trial and that was sustained. The Smith court stated, and correctly so, “It is well established in the practice that where a motion for a new trial is sustained, the case stands for trial de novo as though there had never been a trial; and it thereupon becomes the duty of the court to proceed as in the first instance with no advantage to be taken of the former decision on the one side, or the action of the court in granting the new trial on the other.” (citations omitted)
Thus, the rule in Smith, supra, as applied herein, would have nullified the temporary allowances to respondent because the trial court had granted to appellant a new trial on that issue.
The judgment herein should be reversed and the cause remanded for further proceedings.