Court Opinion

ID: 9851394
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-24 05:11:45.135486+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:20:55.090894
License: Public Domain

OPALA, Justice,
concurring in Part I and dissenting from Part II.
Part II of today’s opinion announces that a surviving spouse’s statutory claim to a family maintenance allowance1 from the deceased spouse’s estate may now be effectively relinquished if there are no minor or dependent children at death and the surviv- or’s antenuptial waiver is clear, express and supported by adequate consideration. The court overrules the In re Rossiter’s Estate2 rule which made unenforceable, as against public policy, all antenuptial contractual waivers of a survivor’s right to the family maintenance allowance.
I recede from the court’s pronouncement in Part II because (a) I would make an antenuptial waiver of statutory family maintenance allowance, however effective as a contractual promise, avoidable by and hence unenforceable against a destitute or needy surviving spouse, even if there were no minor or dependent children at the time of death, and (b) I would not hold, as the court does today, that this widow’s contractual waiver was effective. Rossiter, which was the law both when she entered into her antenuptial agreement on January 19, 1983 and when her husband died, made her promise absolutely void. The law in force at the time a contract is executed governs both its validity and effect. This widow is clearly entitled to have the efficacy of her contractual waiver of the family maintenance allowance measured by the legal norms which were in effect in January of 1983.3 Today’s overruling of Rossiter and the pronouncement of a new rule in Part II of the opinion ought to be given prospective application. This is so because no promise may ever be enforced if it was unenforceable when given.4

. For the provisions of family maintenance allowance, see 58 O.S.1981 § 314.

. In re Rossiter’s Estate, 191 Okl. 342, 129 P.2d 856 [1942].

. The law in force when an agreement was made governs its validity and effect. Tom P. McDermott, Inc. v. Bennett, Okl., 395 P.2d 566, 570 [1964] and Nichols v. Callaway, 200 Okl. 328, 193 P.2d 294, 296 [1948].

.American-First Title & Trust Company v. Ewing, Okl., 403 P.2d 488, 496 [1965] and Gibson v. Phillips University, 195 Okl. 456, 158 P.2d 901, 903 [1945].