Court Opinion

ID: 9856319
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-24 06:44:50.236106+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:38:34.643301
License: Public Domain

BRIGHTMIRE, Presiding Judge,
dissenting.
I think the trial judge correctly determined that the divorce decree specifically provided for “support alimony.” It required the alimony to be paid by liquidating the mortgage indebtedness on the house and car awarded to the woman. Thus as I see it the crucial question is not whether the periodic payments in question are for “support” or for property division, but whether under the circumstances the court had authority to overrule, as it were, the command of 12 O.S.Supp.1976 § 1289(B), that support alimony payments end with death or remarriage of the recipient and require such payments to continue after remarriage absent an agreement of the parties to that effect. In my opinion he did not. See Stuart v. Stuart, Okl., 555 P.2d 611 (1976), and Perry v. Perry, Okl., 551 P.2d 256 (1976).
Subject statute specifies that when a divorce decree provides for periodic alimony payments designated for “support” such payments shall be terminated upon proof of recipient’s death and the decree “shall also provide ... that ... payment of support shall terminate after remarriage of the recipient ...” subject to an action for continuance of the support fileable within 90 days after the remarriage.
Unlike the facts in Perry and Stuart, there is no evidence here that the parties entered into any pre-decree agreement concerning the determination or settlement of all their marital rights; nor was the decree a “consent decree.” Specifically, there was no agreement about support alimony. The woman said her lawyer undertook to represent both parties. The man signed a waiver of service of summons and entry of appearance in the case and the woman, accompanied by the lawyer, obtained a default decree. Apparently the woman’s lawyer prepared a decree setting out the judgment that had been rendered on September 7, 1979, and submitted it to the man for his “approval.” It was signed by the judge and filed October 17, 1979. The closest the woman came to establishing an agreement was when she made the general statement that she and the man discussed and agreed upon a “property settlement.”
The woman, however, never did specify what the parties had agreed to or whether such agreement was ever given effect by the court. The most information gleaned from the woman on direct examination was that she, the man and her lawyer discussed the decree of divorce and the lawyer later prepared one in his office. This was after obtaining a judgment. The man said that the lawyer, however, never explained the alimony provisions to him.
*1043The circumstance of her lawyer attempting to represent the adversaries, if true, casts a grave ethical shadow across the proceedings. Certainly it raises the specter of fraud being presumptively perpetrated on the man.1
The man stopped paying child support after the woman remarried but continued making the alimony payment. Later, after consulting a lawyer, he challenged the validity of the decree insofar as it required post remarriage alimony payments.
To sum up, then, there is no settlement agreement in evidence. There is no evidence the court approved any agreement, nor did he adopt the terms of one in his decree. Nor do the facts, as I said, demonstrate that the court entered a “consent decree.” Ettinger v. Ettinger, Okl., 637 P.2d 63 (1981).
Returning now to the decree itself the majority opinion attributes the problem to a faulty drafting of the decree and singles out the order requiring the man to pay the two mortgages in question — the home mortgage of $6,273.60 and the Chevette mortgage of $3,286.17, totalling $9,559.77 —as the source of the legal grief. Though it may fall short of being paragonal, I see nothing fatally wrong with the drafting. It is quite clear the court intended to award the woman alimony in an amount equal to the two mortgage balances, fixed the periodic payments in an amount equal to the mortgage installments, and ordered the man to make the payments to the mortgage company rather than the woman. As the majority points out, ordering the man to pay the mortgagee must be read as an integral part of the alimony provision and not as an isolated order. There is nothing legally inappropriate about such an order. Of course, the man was placed at the risk of having to continue making payments to the wife for any remaining balance of the $9,559.77 even if the house or car was sold and the mortgage debt prematurely satisfied. Shotwell v. Shotwell, Okl., 603 P.2d 1140 (1979). I am satisfied that had the court ordered the payments made directly to the woman this controversy would not have reached us.
Having arrived at the conclusion that the alimony payments were for support and that the trial court could not amend § 1289(B) by means of contrary provisions, the conclusion seems to inevitably be that the man’s obligation to make the alimony payments ceased when the woman remarried and failed to file a need action within 90 days after that.
Giving the man credit on the child support for the alimony overpayments was, I think, just and equitable in this ease. The record discloses that the woman received a substantial portion of the joint estate, although one cannot tell what percentage because of the lack of property values.
The trial court in my opinion rendered justice, did not abuse his discretion and should be affirmed.

. This type of fraud has been classified as legal fraud, as distinguished from positive or intentional fraud, since it is made out by legal construction or inference. Black’s Law Dictionary, 789 (4th ed. Rev.1968).