Court Opinion

ID: 9561352
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 18:08:24.003713+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:13:44.939260
License: Public Domain

Sears, Justice,
concurring.
I fully concur with the majority. By acknowledging that no person’s spouse has the inherent right to cross the threshold of a residence he or she once occupied but now does not, in order to commit a crime, this Court once again takes one small step across the threshold of reality into life in the 1990s, where divorce has become a much more common phenomenon. I write first to encourage the General Assembly to take a similar but larger and more critical step. Incredible as it may seem in this day and time, our theft statutes still contain the archaic and absurd proposition that one spouse can never be guilty of the theft of property of another spouse, no matter the circumstances.2 Thus, in this case, if the defendant had broken into the separate home of his estranged spouse and taken money that she had struggled to earn and save after their separation, our criminal laws would subject him to no criminal penalty for that theft, effectively granting him a license to steal. The majority opinion rightly expresses its “concernf] [for] such a result,”3 but I think more rightly we should express our outrage for an injustice that fails to comport with contemporary notions of modern marriage and divorce and the evolving *197economic independence of women. Such a law needs undoing.
Decided February 5, 1996.
Spencer Lawton, Jr., District Attorney, David T. Lock, Assistant District Attorney, for appellant.
Mark B. Beberman, for appellee.
I write also to point out that while the point in which two people are married is almost always easy to define, the point in which a marriage is dissolved and one person no longer has the authority to enter the dwelling of another is often far murkier. Being “separated” or “estranged” can connote many things. It can be seen as a temporary respite — a “time out” from a highly stressed marital situation, designed to strengthen a marriage; it may, for some, be a “trial separation” — a chance to see what living apart feels like, in which case divorce is only, for example, a 50/50 proposition; or it can be seen as a temporary but permanent step toward divorce. Given these circumstances, we have no choice but to either trust our factfinders to discern when a spouse has truly vacated hearth and home as part of the process of dissolving his or her relationship, or to ask our lawmakers or trial judges to create a reasonable bright line rule to cover these situations.4

 This result occurs because the object of a theft must be the “property of smother,” OCGA § 16-8-2, and because OCGA § 16-8-1 (3) defines “property of another” so as to exclude “property belonging to the spouse of an accused or to them jointly.” See Calloway v. State, 176 Ga. App. 674, 677-678 (4) (337 SE2d 397) (1985).

 Majority opinion at 196, n. 1.

 Trial judges could perhaps achieve a bright line of demarcation by entering a valid restraining order against one or both spouses.