Court Opinion

ID: 9633756
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 11:58:55.530466+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:08:41.741878
License: Public Domain

*796ALMA WILSON, Justice,
concurring in result:
The result reached by the majority in the case at bar is correct. But the result is reached by carving out an exception to Clifton v. Clifton, 801 P.2d 693 (Okla.1990). That case states in the Conclusion that “Property division provisions stand inviolate by actions of the divorced parties unless they act to vacate, set aside, or modify the decree in a manner authorized by statute.” Consistent with Perry v. Perry, 551 P.2d 256 (Okla.1976), the majority opinion in the case at bar provides for an exception to Clifton if a consent decree includes a provision for subsequent modification of the property settlement involving military retirement benefits. Therefore the attorneys who were able to foresee that the United States Congress would overrule McCarty v. McCarty, 453 U.S. 210, 101 S.Ct. 2728, 69 L.Ed.2d 589 (1981) and subsequently permit division of military retirement pay upon divorce and that this Court would subsequently permit such a division in Stokes v. Stokes, 738 P.2d 1346 (Okla.1987), have protected their clients. The lesson from the holding of this case must be to fill divorce decrees with boilerplate language in the event that the law may change.
I firmly hold to my opinion that Clifton was incorrectly decided. See dissent, Clifton, 801 P.2d at 698. The construction of 12 O.S.Supp.1990, § 1289(F) to limit retroactive reopening of divorce decrees to modifications of payments of alimony as support had to contort the subsection to reach the result. The case held that “In the absence of fraud, a property settlement award, as opposed to an award for support alimony, cannot be modified in a post-decre-tal hearing.” By that holding the majority in Clifton makes general, prior law control over a subsection which was specific and added later in time, all of this against the rules of statutory construction. Clifton, 801 P.2d at 701 (dissenting opinion). Clifton should be overruled.