Court Opinion

ID: 9543282
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 16:43:57.240199+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:10:04.996205
License: Public Domain

GARRARD, Presiding Judge,
concurring.
I concur with the majority except to the extent that its opinion stands for the proposition that the court which dissolved the marriage may only "clarify and enforce" the original order in the absence of fraud, an express provision in a property settlement agreement, or the express agreement of the parties at the time of the proposed modification.
I recognize the general rule cited by the majority and its application to most post dissolution complaints.
I also recognize that occasionally a court may fail to foresee some contingency in its planned disposition of marital property. That risk is somewhat increased when the court is presented with a property agreement executed by the parties.
The judge may conclude that no fraud is involved and that he should restrain the temptation to modify what the parties themselves have agreed to. The lawyers, for a variety of reasons, may have failed to adequately express in the text of the agreement what should be the result upon the occurrence of some contingency.
If such a contingency, in fact, then occurs before the provisions of the agreement/decree have been fully performed, what should happen? |
I see no need to make the answer dependent upon an escape hatch written into the agreement, or upon the agreement of the parties after the question has actually arisen.
Neither do I believe the court should at that juncture consider itself powerless or strain for some semantic difference between "modification" and "clarification" in order to justify action.
The clear purpose of the statute is to provide for a full and final distribution of the property rights of the parties. The parties themselves submitted that determi*882nation to the dissolution court when they granted it jurisdiction to dissolve their marriage.
It is one thing to say that onee finalized by the trial process an order disposing of the property of the parties may not be revoked or modified (except for fraud or upon agreement) in the sense that property given to one spouse may not be given to the other; that what has been done should not be undone. It is quite a different thing to say that some aspect of the division which was not covered may not be considered by the court and provided for. I believe IC 31-1-11.5-17 is concerned with the former, and the inherent power of the court with the latter.
I realize this view should no doubt require fact determinative hearings in some cases to establish whether the alleged omission was indeed such, or whether the occurrence was covered by the agreement/decree, and it was merely the party's failure to perceive the consequences of the agreement that was the problem. Such matters are, however, capable of proof and our trial courts are fully up to the task.
On this basis, I concur.