Bartrom v. Adjustment Bureau, Inc.

• Decision Date: 20 July 1993
• Docket Number: No. 02S04-9307-CV-763,02S04-9307-CV-763
• Citation: 618 N.E.2d 1
• Parties: Mary BARTROM, Appellant (Defendant Below), v. ADJUSTMENT BUREAU, INC., Appellee (Plaintiff Below).
• Court: Indiana Supreme Court

Page 1

618 N.E.2d 1

62 USLW 2086

Mary BARTROM, Appellant (Defendant Below), v. ADJUSTMENT BUREAU, INC., Appellee (Plaintiff Below).

No. 02S04-9307-CV-763.

Supreme Court of Indiana.

July 20, 1993.

David J. Avery, Fort Wayne, for appellant.

Norman S. Snow, Paul O. Sauerteig, Fort Wayne, for appellee.

SHEPARD, Chief Justice.

We grant transfer in this case to consider the vitality of the doctrine of necessaries in this age when multiple statutes impose duties of support on spouses.

Appellee Adjustment Bureau is the assignee of a $67,637.75 claim for medical services provided by the Bureau's assignor, St. Joseph Medical Center, to appellant's late husband, Howard J. Bartrom. Howard and appellant Mary Bartrom were married on January 26, 1979. On or about June 24, 1989, Mary removed herself and the three minor children of the marriage from the marital residence due to Howard's repeated abuse of alcohol and repeated acts of physical and mental abuse towards her. Thereafter, the couple did not cohabitate nor did Howard pay child support or maintenance. On July 19, 1989, Mary filed a petition for dissolution of the marriage.

On July 27, 1989, an automobile accident rendered Howard comatose, and he was immediately taken to St. Joseph Medical Center. Soon thereafter representatives of the hospital contacted Mary requesting that she execute an agreement to pay for the treatment of her husband, which request she refused. Mary never visited Howard during his hospitalization and refused to participate in discussions concerning the withdrawal of his life support. Howard remained at St. Joseph's until August 25, 1989, when he succumbed to his injuries without ever regaining consciousness.

After Howard's only assets--real property valued at $8,000--vested in Mary by right of survivorship, his estate was closed without satisfaction of the St. Joseph's debt. Unable to recover from Howard's estate, St. Joseph's assigned its claim to the Adjustment Bureau which then sought payment from Mary personally. Mary once again disclaimed responsibility, and this suit was commenced.

Following cross motions for summary judgment, the trial court reluctantly found for the Adjustment Bureau and entered judgment against Mary in the amount of $79,812.55. While opining that governing Indiana precedent requires "tragically unfair" results, the court nonetheless felt Mary would have to secure from the appellate courts "a change in the common law before she could avoid liability." The Court of Appeals obliged by a divided vote; it reversed and remanded with instructions to grant Mary's motion for summary judgment. Bartrom v. Adjustment Bureau (1992), Ind.App., 600 N.E.2d 1369.

I. Evolution of the Necessaries Doctrine

A. The Original Doctrine. The doctrine of necessaries was developed to obviate some of the victimization which coverture would otherwise have permitted. While in the state of coverture, a woman lost the capacity to contract, to sue, or be sued in her own right. Henneger v. Lomas (1896), 145 Ind. 287, 44 N.E. 462. Her husband acquired control over her real property and the right to income from it, an interest which his creditors could attach. Cox's Adm'r. v. Wood (1863), 20 Ind. 54. Coverture denied the wife the legal ability to purchase food or clothing on credit, rent or buy shelter, or even contract for medical services. See O'Daily v. Morris (1869), 31 Ind. 111. In short, it stripped a married woman of virtually all means of self-support.

The common law duty of a husband to support his wife has been explained both as a counterbalance to these legal disabilities and as compensation for his right to her earnings and services. See, e.g., Orr v. Orr, 440 U.S. 268, 279 n. 9, 99 S.Ct. 1102, 1112 n. 9, 59 L.Ed.2d 306 (1979). Thus, while the law prohibited a wife from contracting for medical care should she become ill, it imposed a duty on the husband to do so for her, at least to the extent his means permitted. Cf. City of Terre Haute v. Pigg (1940), 108 Ind.App. 68, 73, 27 N.E.2d 137, 139. Even this arrangement, however, had drawbacks apparent to common law courts, not the least of which was the peril at which it placed wives whose husbands were disinclined to honor their support obligations. Imagine, for example, the plight of a gravely ill woman denied by law the ability to hire a doctor and married to a man who refused to do so for her. In time, the common law developed the doctrine of necessaries as a mechanism by which the duty of support could be enforced. See, e.g., Scott v. Carothers (1897), 17 Ind.App. 673, 676-77, 47 N.E. 389, 390.

Under the common law doctrine, if a husband refused to supply his wife with necessaries she was authorized to purchase them on his credit, making him liable to the supplier for their costs. Id.; Watkins v. DeArmond (1883), 89 Ind. 553, 554. Notably, the doctrine was designed to serve not as a free-standing cause of action for wives but as a self-help remedy. The circuitousness of this approach likely stems from the difficulties attendant to fashioning a private remedy for spousal non-support in a legal system which forbade a wife to maintain an action at law against her husband. See Brooks v. Robinson (1972), 259 Ind. 16, 18, 284 N.E.2d 794, 795. It is sometimes said that the doctrine rests on the laws of agency; in truth it transcends such analogies, for a husband's liability was not dependent upon his consent or even upon the apparent authority of his wife. Cf. Litson v. Brown (1866), 26 Ind. 489, 491. ¹ Instead, liability was based on principles of restitution and quasi-contract, inferred from the nature of the wife's condition inasmuch as she had no property and was legally dependent on her husband. Id.; Schouler, supra note 1, at 106.

B. Modern Changes in Necessaries. As reverberations from the lifting of coverture ² slowly resounded through the common law, the underpinnings of the doctrine of necessaries began to give way. In 1980 the New Jersey Supreme Court, believing gender-based liability for necessaries to be both unconstitutional and unjustifiable in an era when many married women work, revised its necessaries rule. Jersey Shore Medical Center-Fitkin Hosp. v. Estate of Baum, 84 N.J. 137, 417 A.2d 1003 (1980). The gender-neutral rule it adopted makes the duty of support mutually enforceable by imposing secondary liability on each spouse for the cost of necessaries purchased by the other. This secondary responsibility is activated only if the spouse who originally incurred the debt cannot pay it. Id. Once activated, however, full and absolute liability exists whether the non-debtor spouse knew of the purchases, promised to pay for them, or even has the financial resources with which to pay the debt. Bartrom, 600 N.E.2d at 1372.

The New Jersey formulation shares the vocabulary but not the underlying rationale of its common law antecedent. Instead, the New Jersey approach is rooted in two "modern" assumptions: (1) that women as a class have made such substantial economic progress that imposition of some legal liability for their husbands necessaries is justified, Jersey Shore, 417 A.2d at 1008; and (2) that even though spouses now legally own their incomes and assets separately, most married couples function in fact as economic units. The court extrapolated from these assumptions the conclusion that marital partners' reasonable expectations "are that their income and assets are held for the benefit of the marital partnership and, incidentally, for creditors who provide necessaries for either spouse." Id. at 1010.

In Memorial Hosp. v. Hahaj (1982), Ind.App., 430 N.E.2d 412, the Indiana Court of Appeals adopted the New Jersey approach in toto. It accepted the Jersey Shore formulation that marriage is a " 'shared enterprise, a joint undertaking, that in many ways ... is akin to a partnership,' " and that, as such, both the marital partners and their creditors expect the financial resources of the respective spouses to be available for the payment of the necessary debts of the other. Id. at 416 (quoting Jersey Shore, 417 A.2d at 1010.) Nonetheless, the court said, it would be unfair, "to accord the same rights to a creditor who provides necessaries on the basis of an agreement with one spouse as to a creditor who has an agreement with both spouses." Id. (quoting Jersey Shore.) The court thus adopted the secondary liability principle both as a solution to this problem and also to provide "some protection" to the non-debtor spouse.

C. Modern Indiana Necessaries. We think the Court of Appeals was correct when it declined to abolish the doctrine of necessaries as some jurisdictions have done ³ but instead chose to reformulate it in a gender-neutral manner. ⁴ The notion that the available resources of one spouse ought be used to help support the other should the other become necessitous flows from the nature of the marital relationship itself. Cf. Aurora Casket v. Ropers (1947), 117 Ind.App. 684, 75 N.E.2d 680. Furthermore, the duty of spousal support is clearly embedded in Indiana's modern law of domestic relations. Ind.Code Ann. Sec. 31-1-11.5-11(e) (West Supp.1992) (post-dissolution maintenance), Sec. 31-1-11.5-7(d) (West Supp.1992) (temporary maintenance); Ind.Code Ann. Sec. 31-7-11-1 (West Supp.1992) (actions for support not attendant to dissolution); Ind.Code Ann. Sec. 35-46-1-6 (West 1986) (failure to support needy spouse a Class D felony). We also agree with the Court of Appeals that each spouse should be held primarily liable on the contracts he or she makes in an individual capacity, whether for necessaries or otherwise. ⁵

Although these general points from Memorial Hospital seem sound, we reject the approach adopted by the Court of Appeals. In championing a mutually enforceable duty of support, the court opined that the modern doctrine of necessaries ought be rooted in the expectations of a married couple that the income and assets of each will be held for the benefit...