Court Opinion

ID: 9682761
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 13:16:30.501978+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:17:41.304403
License: Public Domain

WILHOIT, Judge,
dissenting.
I respectfully dissent from so much of the majority opinion as holds that Dr. Inman’s license to practice dentistry should be treated as marital property, and as denies Mrs. Inman maintenance. The very thoughtful opinion of the majority is persuasive, aimed as it is at reaching an equitable result in a perplexing factual situation. Nevertheless, in this particular case it seems to me that an equitable result can better be reached through an award of maintenance rather than by resort to the tenuous proposition that a license to practice a profession is marital property. Aside from conceptual difficulties, the introduction of such a notion into our law is apt to cause at least as many problems as it would solve.
KRS 403.190 specifically provides that marital property shall be divided “without regard to marital misconduct,” while such a stricture does not apply to maintenance. Consider a situation in which a spouse helps to put a husband or wife through professional school but sometime after graduation and before substantial marital property has been acquired deserts the young professional for an older and wealthier professional person. A most inequitable result might be reached by allowing this spouse to share in, as marital property, the professional license of the deserted partner.
In Casper v. Casper, Ky., 510 S.W.2d 253 (1974), the Court sensibly read the “unable to support himself” provision of KRS 403.-200(l)(b) as being relative rather than absolute. It concluded that the “standard of living established during the marriage” provision of subsection (2)(c) of that statute is to be considered in determining whether a spouse is able to support himself. In the present case it is clear that Mrs. Inman is capable of supporting herself, but not to the standard of living established by the parties during their marriage. When this and other factors relevant to the determination of the amount of maintenance are considered, an equitable result can be reached here.
I recognize that for various reasons it may not always be possible to use maintenance to reach an equitable result in divorce proceedings. Perhaps this problem should be addressed by the Legislature. The marital property concept simply does not fit.