Blaine v. Blaine

• Decision Date: 01 September 1992
• Docket Number: No. 1685,1685
• Citation: 632 A.2d 191,97 Md.App. 689
• Parties: Jack D. BLAINE v. Bryna J. BLAINE. ,
• Court: Court of Special Appeals of Maryland

Page 689

97 Md.App. 689

632 A.2d 191

Jack D. BLAINE v. Bryna J. BLAINE.

No. 1685, Sept. Term, 1992.

Court of Special Appeals of Maryland.

Oct. 27, 1993.

David Shelton Goldberg, Rockville, for appellant.

Allen J. Kruger, Laurel, for appellee.

Argued before ALPERT, HARRELL and MURPHY, JJ.

HARRELL, Judge.

On 15 November 1985, the Circuit Court for Montgomery County granted Bryna J. Blaine, appellee, a divorce from Jack D. Blaine, appellant, and awarded her alimony in the amount of $800.00 per month for sixty (60) months. Near the end of this time period, appellee filed a Motion to Extend and Increase Alimony. A domestic relations master heard the parties' evidence and issued Findings of Fact and Recommendations proposing that the initial alimony award be extended indefinitely at the same monthly amount. After considering exceptions to the master's report, the chancellor issued an Order adopting the master's recommendations. Appellant's timely Notice of Appeal followed.

Facts

The parties were married on 16 February 1967. Two children were born to the Blaines. At the commencement of the marriage, Ms. Blaine worked while her husband completed medical school, an internship, and a residency. After the children were born, Ms. Blaine worked in the home as a mother and homemaker while Dr. Blaine was employed as a physician. Difficulties arose in the marriage and, in April of 1983, the parties separated.

The Circuit Court for Montgomery County granted Ms. Blaine an absolute divorce on 15 November 1985 and simultaneously awarded her alimony. In its Memorandum and Order, the court (Beard, J.) noted the following in connection with its award of alimony:

Plaintiff [Dr. Blaine] is currently employed as a psychiatrist by the National Institute on Mental Health and earns an annual salary in excess of Sixty-Two Thousand Dollars ($62,000.00). For the past few years, Defendant [Ms. Blaine] has worked as a teacher's aid[e] during the children's school hours and earns approximately Ten Thousand Dollars ($10,000.00) annually. She is also presently seeking a masters degree, which she anticipates will be completed in two to three years[.]

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Both the Plaintiff and Defendant are in their middle years. Presently both parties have regular incomes, though the Defendant's is disproportionately less than that of the Plaintiff. The conduct of the Plaintiff is the basis upon which the marriage has terminated. The parties have been married for eighteen years. At this time each party enjoys good health, both physically and mentally. The primary source of financial support for the maintenance of the family has been provided by the Plaintiff. Based upon the entire record, the evidence and testimony produced by the parties and other witnesses at the hearings in this case with respect to the financial needs and resources of the parties, the ability of each to be wholly or partially self-supporting, the standard of living established during the marriage, the duration of the marriage, contributions, monetary and non-monetary of each party to the well-being of the family, the fact that the circumstances leading to the estrangement of the parties and of the dissolution of the marriage, the age and physical condition of the parties, the health and well-being of the minor children, and having balanced the monetary award with the alimony, child support and fees granted, it is by the Circuit Court for Montgomery County, Maryland this 15th day of November, 1985,

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ORDERED, that Jack D. Blaine pay to Bryna J. Blaine alimony in the amount of Eight Hundred Dollars ($800.00) per month for sixty (60) months beginning December 1, 1985 and on the 15th of each month thereafter, beginning January 15, 1986, and including November 15, 1990, or until the death of either party or the remarriage of Bryna J. Blaine[.]

Ms. Blaine received her Master's Degree in health promotion counseling from Trinity College in Washington D.C. in May of 1988. She intended to become a business consultant counseling employees on how to maintain healthy lifestyles and, correspondingly, keep employers' health costs at a minimum. Despite her diligent efforts to find a job in this field, she was unsuccessful. She blamed the recession, stating: "it seems with the economy falling down ... this is a fringe benefit, this is something that was easily wiped out for companies that had it, or certainly not added to." On 29 November 1990, Ms. Blaine filed a Motion to Extend and Increase Alimony on the grounds that the scarcity of jobs in the field of health counseling rendered her unable to rehabilitate her condition. She alleged that there was "still a vast disparity of income between the parties."

Based on the evidence received at a 19 July 1991 hearing, the master made a number of findings concerning Ms. Blaine, including the following: (1) her gross annual income totaled $31,000.00 from three jobs (in addition to her full time job with the Montgomery County Board of Education, she also worked approximately once a week teaching Hebrew school and occasionally proctored the administration of standardized scholastic aptitude tests); (2) she had exerted "reasonable efforts to obtain employment" in her field and sought employment in a related field (counseling), but received no offer that would equal or exceed the earnings from her three current jobs; (4) her current primary job held "no potential for advancement"; and (5) although she "made as much progress toward becoming self-supporting as can reasonably be expected," the parties' respective standards of living remained "unconscionably disparate."

With respect to Dr. Blaine, the master found that appellant's gross income was $136,750.00 per year before consideration of tax shelters, and that neither he nor his former wife anticipated that she would be unable to secure a job in her new field of study after she received her Master's degree. The master concluded that "[t]he lack of jobs in the health promotion counselling field was a change of circumstances and the inability of the defendant to obtain the anticipated income would lead to a harsh and inequitable result without an extension of alimony." The master therefore recommended that Dr. Blaine "pay alimony of $800.00 per month to [Ms. Blaine]" and that the alimony be "extended for an indefinite period." ¹ The circuit court (Ryan, J.) agreed and ordered the establishment of indefinite alimony as recommended by the master in an Order dated 8 June 1992.

Additional facts will be supplied, as needed, in our analysis of the issues presented by this appeal.

Issues

Appellant presents the following three contentions for our consideration: ²(1) Where, during the period that the appellee received rehabilitative alimony, she earned her master's degree and tripled her income, the trial court erred in indefinitely extending alimony pursuant to Family Law Article 11-107(a)(1), Code of Maryland;

(2) Where the trial judge determined at the time the parties were divorced that an award of indefinite alimony was not appropriate, the court at a later date, acting pursuant to Family Law Article 11-107(a)(1), Code of Maryland, may not revisit that determinon [sic] and award indefinite alimony;

(3) In determining whether or not pursuant to Family Law Article 11-107(a)(1), Code of Maryland, to extend the period for which alimony is awarded, it is not appropriate to consider the payor spouse's post divorce increases in income.

Statutory Background

Section 11-107(a)(1) of the Md.Code (1991 Repl.Vol., 1992 Suppl.), Family Law Article ³ states: "[T]he court may extend the period for which alimony is awarded if ... circumstances arise during the period that would lead to a harsh and inequitable result without an extension[.]" Thus, we must decide whether the lower court was correct in finding that (1) a change in circumstance arose between the date of the original alimony award and when it considered the Motion to Extend and Increase Alimony, and (2) a failure to award the extension would have led to a harsh and inequitable result.

If these criteria are met, and modification of the award is therefore appropriate, a court must nonetheless refrain from granting an alimony award for an indefinite time period unless appellee meets the requirements of § 11-106(c), which states:

(c) Award for indefinite period.--The court may award alimony for an indefinite period, if the court finds that:

(1) due to age, illness, infirmity, or disability, the party seeking alimony cannot reasonably be expected to make substantial progress toward becoming self-supporting; or

(2) even after the party seeking alimony will have made as much progress toward becoming self-supporting as can reasonably be expected, the respective standards of living of the parties will be unconscionably disparate.

Prologue

An alimony determination may not be disturbed unless the trial court's judgment is clearly wrong or an arbitrary use of discretion. Brodak v. Brodak, 294 Md. 10, 28-29, 447 A.2d 847 (1982). Although this standard of review has been in place for many years, see generally Westphal v. Westphal, 132 Md. 330, 334, 103 A. 846 (1918), the enactment of Maryland's present alimony statute in 1980 reaffirmed the discretion granted to trial court judges in divorce proceedings.

The current law governing awards of alimony in Maryland, §§ 11-101 through 11-111 of the Family Law Article was originally passed as ch. 575 of the Acts of 1980. In making alimony awards pursuant to this statute, courts must ascertain the intention of the legislature and execute the purpose of the law. See Tracey v. Tracey, 328 Md. 380, 387, 614 A.2d 590 (1992). To implement this objective of statutory construction, courts first look at the plain meaning of the statutory language to determine how the legislature intended a law to be applied. Id. The language of § 11-106(c) and § 11-107(a) is not complicated or difficult to understand. The...