Court Opinion

ID: 9538586
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 07:37:58.132805+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T14:57:59.447458
License: Public Domain

HARTZ, Judge (specially concurring). Although I concur in the result, I cannot join in the majority’s opinion. My principal disagreement is with what I perceive to be the majority’s approach to statutory interpretation. Most legislative enactments represent a compromise between competing interests. Not uncommonly judges, just as other citizens, will view one of those competing interests as the more “moral” and the other as the more “self-interested.” Support for the moral interest may well be found in other statutes and judicial opinions. Of course, these sources of authority may shed light in interpreting a statutory provision. It is a mistake, however, to focus entirely on support for the moral interest and to ignore the influence on the statute of the less attractive self-interest when one is construing the statute to resolve a dispute between those two interests. If in such disputes the statute is always read to support the moral interest as much as possible, then the court may well be undermining the compromise intended by the legislature that enacted the statute. Our function is to interpret the statute as enacted, not to give the “forces of good” a victory which they were not able to achieve in the legislative arena. In this case the majority clearly identifies the moral high ground and the reprehensible self-interest. The moral high ground is enforcement of a father’s obligation to support his children. The self-interest is the father’s desire to maintain some personal possessions. New people would question the priority of the father’s obligation to his children. Yet there is room for debate on where to draw the line. Is a parent who owes child support nevertheless entitled to maintain some minimum amount of personal property? It is not inconceivable that concern for the father’s interest could find expression in legislative enactments. For example, although one who owes child support is not entitled to the ordinary debtor’s statutory exemption from wage garnishment of 75% of disposable earnings, one who is delinquent in child-support payments is still entitied to a 50% exemption. NMSA 1978, § 35-12-7. This garnishment statute reflects a compromise between the moral imperative of supporting one’s child and the self-interest of the defaulting parent. Similarly, the legislature may determine that a parent who has defaulted on child support is still entitled to exempt a car of limited value from enforcement of the support obligation. One might distinguish such an exemption from the limitation on garnishment on the ground that the garnishment exemption is necessary to encourage the defaulting parent to seek and maintain employment. Perhaps that consideration was a factor in fixing the limitation on garnishment. Yet a motor vehicle may also be necessary to seek and maintain employment. In this case it appears that father was not employed, so that particular argument for an automobile exemption may not apply to him; but there may also be circumstances in which the 50% exemption from garnishment would not be necessary to encourage a particular defaulting parent to keep a job. The legislature simply may have decided that regardless of whether the exemption enables or encourages the debtor to work, the exemption is fair and justified. I should note that courts in other states — courts that are not ordinarily considered to be benighted— have interpreted state statutes to provide the defaulting parent with a normal exemption of debtors from creditors. Ogle v. Heim, 69 Cal.2d 7, 69 Cal.Rptr. 579, 442 P.2d 659 (1968) (en banc) (rejecting argument that the exemption be read in light of its purpose to protect family of the debtor); Utley v. Utley, 355 Mass. 469, 245 N.E.2d 435 (1969) (rejecting argument that exemption was not intended to shield one from duty to support wife and children). In short, the question of statutory interpretation confronting us in this case should not be decided by a simple appeal to the general proposition that parents have a fundamental obligation to support their children.1 Instead, this court should focus on the specific language of the pertinent statutes and on authority relating to the relative weight to be given the competing interests in this case. The specific statutory language lends substantial support to mother’s view. Both NMSA 1978, Section 42-10-1, entitled “Exemptions of Married Persons or Heads of Households,” and Section 42-10-2, entitled “Exemptions of Persons Who Support Only Themselves,” exempt personal property in the amount of $500 and one motor vehicle in the amount of $4,0002 “from receivers or trustees in bankruptcy or other insolvency proceedings, fines, attachment, execution or foreclosure by a judgment creditor.” 3 In this case mother foreclosed on a child-support lien created by NMSA 1978, Section 40-4-15 (Repl.Pamp.1989). Strictly speaking, the proceeding was not a “foreclosure by a judgment creditor” and therefore would not come within the exemption statutes. Father relies on NMSA 1978, Section 40-4-16, which provides that child-support liens “may be foreclosed under the same procedure as is now allowed for the foreclosure of judgment liens.” I doubt, however, whether the availability of exemptions is part of the “procedure” for the foreclosure of judgment liens. The availability of an exemption would appear to be a matter of substance, to be distinguished from procedures such as those governing notice of sale. Thus, on their face the relevant statutory provisions do not appear to provide for the exemption sought by father. Moreover, other authority indicates that the legislature intended to give the child-support lien priority over a parent’s claim of exemptions. First, the language of Tomson v. Lerner, 37 N.M. 546, 25 P.2d 209 (1933), suggests that statutory liens in general cannot be defeated by claims of exemption. We can presume that the legislature was familiar with that decision when it reenacted the child-support lien statute in 1947, N.M.Laws 1947, ch. 16, § 4, and that it would have made special provision to recognize exemptions to the lien if that was the legislative intent. See Quintana v. New Mexico Dep’t of Corrections, 100 N.M. 224, 668 P.2d 1101 (1983) (legislature presumed to know the law). Second, the law gives the obligation of child support priority over any property interest of the parent at the time of dissolution of the marriage. When a marriage is dissolved and the district court makes a determination regarding the children’s need for support, the court may “set apart out of the property of the respective parties, such portion thereof, for the maintenance and education of their minor children, as may seem just and proper.” NMSA 1978, § 40-4-7(B)(3). A parent could not claim that property is exempt from being set aside for purposes of child support, because it is impossible to read the list of circumstances in which Sections 42-10-1 and -2 apply (receiverships, foreclosures, etc.) as including an order under Section 40-4-7(B)(3). One can view the statutory scheme as in essence providing the district court with two alternatives for ensuring that the children receive proper support: (1) setting aside at the outset property which could be used to pay all or a portion of the necessary support or (2) relying upon the parents to provide for support out of their income, but securing that obligation with the statutory lien on their assets.4 When the child-support lien is seen in this light — as an alternative to assigning the property for the benefit of the children in the first place — it would be peculiar to exempt property from the lien when that property could not have been exempted from the assignment. Finally, I find it significant that even if father could claim an exemption here, mother could eventually overcome that exemption if father continued to fail to pay his child-support obligation. If mother forced father into bankruptcy, all of father’s property would be subject to the claim for support obligations. See 11 U.S.C. §§ 522(c)(1), 523(a)(5); Matter of Sullivan, 83 B.R. 623, 624 (Bkrtcy.S.D.Iowa 1988). To be sure, we cannot assume that the New Mexico legislature will balance the interests of the defaulting parent and the children the same way the Congress does. Still, we should refrain from adopting a construction of New Mexico law which, in the face of federal law, would serve little or no purpose. To permit a claim of exemption to a child-support lien would create a pointless anomaly in the law, because the exempt property could have been reached initially by setting it aside for child support under § 40-4-7(B)(3) or could be reached ultimately under federal bankruptcy law. Thus, denial of the exemption claimed by father is the construction of New Mexico law that best follows the literal language of our statutes, that best comports with other expressions of legislative intent to give the statutory child-support lien priority over the exemption, and that “fits most logically and comfortably” into the surrounding body of law. West Va. Univ. Hosps. v. Casey, — U.S. —, 111 S.Ct. 1138, 1148, 113 L.Ed.2d 68 (1991). I therefore concur in the result.  . I should add that this case also should not be decided on the basis of the hyperbolic claim that a contrary construction of the statute would render child-support obligations unenforceable.   . Because essentially the same personal property exemptions are permitted to persons with dependents and persons without dependents, I find it difficult to read into the exemption statutes a priority of the interests of the dependents over the interest of the debtor.   .The exemption in Section 42-10-2 applies also to executors or administrators in probate.   . This scheme was perhaps more explicit in the predecessor to the present child-support lien statute, 1941 Comp. § 25-708, which in the same paragraph both (1) permitted the judge to vest title to the parents’ property in a trustee for the purpose of maintenance and education of the children and (2) provided that if money was allowed to the children, the obligation would be secured by a lien on all property of the parents.