Court Opinion

ID: 9861856
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-25 00:49:07.288447+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T11:29:33.534469
License: Public Domain

REYNOLDSON, Chief Justice
(dissenting).
I cannot agree that the district court’s well-reasoned ruling, denying mandamus in these circumstances, should be overturned.
The rules we apply in these cases are summarized succinctly in 52 Am.Jur.2d Mandamus § 64, at 388 (1970):
To warrant the issuance of [a] writ [of mandamus], not only must there be a legal right in the relator, but, owing to the extraordinary and drastic character of mandamus and the caution exercised by courts in awarding it, it is also important that the right sought to be enforced be clear and certain. There must be an immediate right to have the act in question performed, and such right must be specific, well defined, and complete, so as not to admit of any reasonable controversy.
See Hewitt v. Ryan, 356 N.W.2d 230, 233 (Iowa 1984); Hurd v. Odgaard, 297 N.W.2d 355, 357 (Iowa 1980); Headid v. Rodman, 179 N.W.2d 767, 770 (Iowa 1970) (“Plaintiff’s right to the performance of the act he seeks to compel must be clear, certain and free from the possibility of any reasonable controversy.”). In the face of these principles, it ought to give us pause in reversing the district court when plaintiff deems it necessary to attack the constitutionality of the statutes the clerk was following in refusing to make a book entry that defendant’s obligations under the dissolution decree were satisfied.
Further, plaintiff’s brief concedes that at least in the 1985 amendments to Iowa Code section 588.22 “it is clear that the legislature intended to require, prospectively, payments to be made through the office of the Clerk of Court.” Nowhere in the Iowa law do we find the concept that a friendly relationship between parties to a dissolution decree, however commendable, will excuse a failure to comply with the plain language of the decree, or the express intent of Iowa *172Code provisions. Plaintiff’s quandary clearly is of his own making.
I. District court was on solid ground in holding amended Iowa Code section 598.22 constitutional. Plaintiff’s brief concedes the “State has a legitimate interest in seeing that parents support their children.” The state has evidenced this concern, at least from the inception of our 1970 “no-fault” dissolution act,1 by requiring that all orders for support shall direct “the payment of such sums to the clerk of the district court for the use of the person for whom the payments have been awarded.” Iowa Code § 598.22 (1985) (as amended by 1985 Iowa Acts ch. 178, § 8). Such orders shall be “open to the public.” Id. If the ordered payments are not paid, the clerk is mandated to certify a default to the court, which, on its own motion, may institute contempt proceedings. Id.
The reasons for a readily available record of support payments, kept by a public official, are plain enough. Domestic relations cases, many generated by child support controversies, clog our courts and comprise almost fifty percent of our civil docket. Nor is Iowa an exception to the national problem palpated by Senate Report (Finance Committee) No. 93-1356, relating to the Social Services Amendments of 1974:
The problem of welfare in the United States is, to a considerable extent, a problem of the non-support of children by their absent parents. Of the 11 million recipients who are now receiving Aid to Families With Dependent Children (AFDC), 4 out of every 5 are on the rolls because they have been deprived of the support of a parent who has absented himself from the home.
1974 U.S.Code Cong. & Admin.News 8133, 8145.
Support payments too long delinquent have triggered coercive settlements for desperate custody parents, impoverishing such parents and their children. See, e.g., In re Marriage of Carlson, 338 N.W.2d 136 (Iowa 1983). In other situations alleged releases of unrecorded support payments, e.g., Broyles v. Iowa Dep’t of Social Servs., 305 N.W.2d 718, 723 (Iowa 1981), and oral or written “modifications” of support obligations, e.g., Denning v. Denning, 185 N.W.2d 238, 240 (Iowa 1971); Herb v. Herb, 251 Iowa 957, 959-60, 103 N.W.2d 361, 362 (1960), have resulted in unnecessary litigation.
Small wonder, then, that the legislature took additional steps to insure compliance with the original intent and purpose of Iowa Code section 598.22. The 1985 amendments to section 598.222 specifically provided that except in certain circumstances not present here payments to persons other than the district court clerk “do not satisfy the support obligations created by such orders or judgments.” Iowa Code § 598.22 (1985) (as amended by 1985 Iowa Acts ch. 178, § 8) (emphasis added). Except for those same circumstances, the amendments further provided that “[t]he clerk shall not enter any moneys paid in the record book if not paid directly to the clerk.” Id. This legislation of course furthers the intent of Congress expressed at 42 U.S.C. section 654 (“State plan for child and spousal support”), subsection 10 of which states the plan must “provide that the State will maintain a full record of collections and disbursements made under the plan and have an adequate reporting system.” 42 U.S.C. § 654 (1982).
Addressing the constitutionality of these statutory provisions, plaintiff’s brief concedes a suspect classification is not involved here. We thus apply the analysis recently articulated in State v. Martin, 383 N.W.2d 556, 560 (Iowa 1986):
Because the statute does not involve a suspect classification or a fundamental right, it is evaluated under the traditional test for equal protection. Under that test, the statute is presumed to be valid and will be sustained if the classification *173drawn is rationally related to a legitimate state interest.
I agree with the district court that “[t]he State has a legitimate governmental interest in promoting compliance with the law, preventing fraud, and protecting its citizens from unnecessary court litigation.” Iowa Code section 598.22 as amended does not violate the equal protection provisions of the United States and Iowa Constitutions.
Nor are the amendments under scrutiny unconstitutionally overbroad as claimed by the plaintiff. Here the plaintiff appears to argue the 1985 amendments sweep too broadly in adversely affecting someone like him, who has merely violated the court’s decree by making payments directly to the custodial parent. Plaintiff cites no helpful authority. Ordinarily legislation is challenged for overbreadth only where there is a claimed violation of first amendment rights. 16A Am.Jur.2d Constitutional Law § 460, at 246-48 (1979); see, e.g., State v. Wedelstedt, 213 N.W.2d 652, 654-56 (Iowa 1973). Plaintiffs “overbreadth” contention is without merit.
II. Not only is there strong authority to hold amended Iowa Code section 598.22 constitutional, there is support to hold the defendant clerk rightly refused to enter satisfaction of the child support judgment.
The majority embraces plaintiffs argument that Iowa Code sections 602.8102(98), 624.20, and 624.37 require the clerk to enter a notation of satisfaction of the child support judgment on the judgment docket. These statutory provisions apply to judgments generally. The flaw in this analysis is that a child support judgment, under the plain language of amended Iowa Code section 598.22, is not satisfied by payments to persons other than the clerk of the district court. Amended Iowa Code section 598.22 is a specific statute dealing directly with the manner of satisfying child support judgments. Under a well-settled principle of Iowa law, this specific statute prevails over the general statutes relating to judgments. Iowa Code § 4.7 (1985); Ritter v. Dagel, 261 Iowa 870, 881, 156 N.W.2d 318, 324-25 (1968); State v. Halverson, 261 Iowa 530, 537-38, 155 N.W.2d 177, 181 (1967) (“It is a fundamental rule that where a general statute, if standing alone would include the same matter as a special statute and thus conflict with it, the special act will be considered an exception to or qualification of the general statute and will prevail over it, whether it was passed before or after such general enactment.”).
If, as plaintiff contends, these conflicting statutes must be “construed, if possible, so that effect is given to both,”3 then it must be conceded that section 598.22 defines the only manner in which a child support judgment can be satisfied and only upon satisfaction in the prescribed way does the clerk have an obligation to note the judgment satisfied under sections 602.8102(98), 624.-20, and 624.37.
The distinction between this case and Proctor v. Garrett, 378 N.W.2d 298 (Iowa 1985), relied on by the majority, is clear. In Proctor we held the county recorder was not authorized to make a judgment on the validity of a common-law lien presented for recording. In the case before us the clerk was not called upon to exercise a judgment whether the obligation of the support decree was satisfied. The clerk’s own record of payments, which the clerk was obligated to keep, immediately disclosed there was no satisfaction of the judgment. To require the clerk to note a judgment satisfied upon presentation of a purported written “satisfaction” not only would require the clerk to ignore his or her own records, but would violate the plain statutory intent. Further, it would effectively repeal the legislative language that specifically declares, in amended Iowa Code section 598.22, that such a judgment is not satisfied by payments made to a person other than the clerk.
The majority’s solution is to return the parties and the State to the conditions the 1985 amendments to section 598.22 were designed to cure. The majority reasons the validity and legal effect of the purported “satisfaction” may be fought out in subse*174quent lawsuits to determine whether the payments actually were made, or whether statutory liens on real estate still exist.4 This result leaves Iowa’s title examiners in a murky battlefield saturated with legal land mines.
I would deny the writ of mandamus on the ground there is a reasonable controversy whether the clerk was required to note the “satisfaction” of the judgment against this plaintiff. Were I to reach the merits, I would hold the clerk had no such obligation with respect to any written “satisfaction” relating to required child support payments falling due after July 1, 1985, the effective date of the 1985 amendments to Iowa Code section 598.22.
SCHULTZ, WOLLE, and NEUMAN, JJ„ join this dissent.

. 1970 Iowa Acts ch. 1266.

. In 1986 the legislature underscored its intent by inserting essentially the same language in a new code chapter creating the child support recovery unit. See Iowa Code § 252B.14 (1987).

. "A court-ordered child-support judgment becomes a lien when payment is due." In re Marriage of McMorrow, 342 N.W.2d 73, 75 (Iowa 1983) (quoting Broyles v. Iowa Dep’t of Social Servs., 305 N.W.2d 718, 721 (Iowa 1981)); see Iowa Code § 624.24 (1985) (as amended by 1985 Iowa Acts ch. 100, § 9 and as repealed and substitute enacted, 1986 Iowa Acts ch. 1014, § 2).

. See Iowa Code § 4.7 (1985).