Clark v. Barba

• Decision Date: 23 September 1994
• Docket Number: No. 93-P-979,93-P-979
• Parties: Sandra Ann CLARK v. Kenneth R. BARBA, administrator. 1
• Court: Appeals Court of Massachusetts

Page 476

640 N.E.2d 476

37 Mass.App.Ct. 322

Sandra Ann CLARK v. Kenneth R. BARBA, administrator. ¹

No. 93-P-979.

Appeals Court of Massachusetts,

Hampden.

Argued April 20, 1994.

Decided Sept. 23, 1994.

Stephen Ferrarone, Springfield, for plaintiff.

Kenneth R. Barba, Springfield, for defendant.

Before DREBEN, KAPLAN and LAURENCE, JJ.

DREBEN, Justice.

Subsequent to a divorce judgment, a "temporary judgment of modification" transferred physical custody of the parties' three minor children from their father to their mother. The father died two months later. No change in the child support order was made prior to the father's death. The question presented in this appeal is whether the probate judge, in these circumstances, could modify the child support provisions of the judgment of divorce after the death of the father. A judge of the Probate Court thought he could not and denied the mother's complaint for modification. ² While older cases, primarily Gediman v. Cameron, 306 Mass. 138, 141, 27 N.E.2d 696 (1940), concluded that the then current statutes did not justify orders made after the death of a parent, legislative developments since that time, among them the expansion of the obligations of child support and the explicit expression that it is legislative policy that children be maintained as completely as possible from the resources of their parents and not those of government, suggest that the statutory interpretation of Gediman be reconsidered. See DuMont v. Godbey, 382 Mass. 234, 239, 415 N.E.2d 188 (1981).

We first recount the proceedings relative to custody and support. A judgment of divorce nisi, which became absolute on February 21, 1991, provided for joint custody of the parties' three minor children, but awarded physical custody to the father. The mother was required to pay child support of thirty dollars a week. ³ On February 10, 1992, a "temporary judgment of modification" was entered, providing that the "sole legal and physical custody" of the minor children was awarded to the Department of Social Services; the Department was authorized to place the children with the father; the father was prohibited from consuming any alcoholic beverages; and the matter was made subject to review by the court after the Department completed its assessment. The provisions were ordered "all until the further order of the Court."

On May 4, 1992, a second "temporary judgment of modification," again to be effective "until further order of the court," authorized the Department to place the minor children in the physical custody of the mother and gave the father visitation rights.

On July 10, 1992, the father died. ⁴ Thereafter, on August 21, 1992, the Department moved that the order granting legal custody to it be revoked as the Department "believes that [the mother] is providing adequate care for the children and should be granted full custody of her children."

The docket of the divorce proceedings does not indicate any action on the motion or any additional modification judgment, but the record on appeal contains a decree, dated October 13, 1992, under another docket number, appointing the mother guardian of her minor children. ⁵ On October 30, 1992, the lawyer who had represented the father in the divorce proceedings was appointed administrator of the father's estate.

On March 31, 1993, the mother filed a motion for modification and for reopening the divorce judgment. She sought an order permitting the father's assets (a parcel of real estate) to be made available for child support. ⁶ The administrator opposed the motion claiming that the action had abated with the father's death and that the court had no jurisdiction to modify the judgment. As indicated earlier, the mother's motion was denied.

To support his argument that any claim for child support abated on the father's death, the father's administrator relies on Gediman v. Cameron, 306 Mass. at 141, 27 N.E.2d 696, and Barron v. Puzo, 415 Mass. 54, 610 N.E.2d 973 (1993). We turn to those cases and also to DuMont v. Godbey, 382 Mass. at 234, 415 N.E.2d 188.

In Gediman, the child's father was found guilty of nonsupport in 1912 and was ordered to make weekly payments for "the use of" his wife and their daughter. In 1938, some twenty-six years later, the wife made a claim against the estate of the father. He had died in 1937. Her claim was two-fold: for arrears alleged to be due her on the order for payments made in 1912 on the criminal complaint; and for a fair and reasonable amount for the past support of herself and child both before and after her divorce. ⁷ The court held that a proceeding for nonsupport was a criminal prosecution, that an order for payments was not the equivalent of a personal judgment obtained by the wife against the husband or his estate either before or after his death, and the only sanction for the enforcement of the order was to be found in the criminal sentence for which the statute provided. 306 Mass. at 139-140, 27 N.E.2d 696. As to the wife's rights to recover a personal judgment against the husband for support of herself or the child, the court held that such claims had to be brought as a petition for separate support or as a libel for divorce, that the statutory provisions covering the field of civil liability were exclusive, and that there was no common law cause of action. The court went on to say, and this is the language relied on by the administrator:

"All of these statutes contemplate proceedings in the manner provided in them between living parties and the making of orders to operate prospectively in accordance with the existing financial condition of the parties, but subject to change if conditions change. These statutes do not justify orders or judgments made after the death of a necessary party, operating retroactively, and entered in a form of proceeding not authorized in the statutes themselves."

306 Mass. at 141, 27 N.E.2d 696.

In Cameron v. Cameron, 307 Mass. 609, 29 N.E.2d 843 (1940), the same woman as in Gediman appealed from a dismissal of her petition seeking a modification of the divorce decree for an award of alimony. The Supreme Judicial Court gave her claim short shrift, citing part of the language in Gediman, quoted above.

In Barron v. Puzo, 415 Mass. 54, 610 N.E.2d 973, a case involving alimony, and not child support, the wife filed a complaint for modification some fourteen and one-half years after the husband's final payment of alimony under their divorce decree. That decree, dated March 27, 1974, provided that alimony was to be paid in a designated amount until July 1, 1976, and was to be extended for an additional year if the wife enrolled in college. Significantly, the decree provided that the alimony provisions "shall represent the full and complete obligation of [the husband] to pay alimony ... to [the wife] and [the wife] agrees to accept all of such payments in full satisfaction of [her] claim for alimony." Id. at 55, 610 N.E.2d 973 (interior ellipses omitted). The wife filed her complaint on December 13, 1991, at a time when her husband was terminally ill. He died on December 24, 1991. The administrator's motion to dismiss the complaint was denied by a probate judge. An interlocutory appeal was authorized, and the Supreme Judicial Court reversed.

After quoting the language of Cameron v. Cameron and Gediman, that the statutes "contemplate proceedings ... between living parties ... [and] do not justify orders or judgments made after the death of a necessary party, operating retroactively," the court pointed out that the alimony that had been ordered was limited and fixed, had been paid in full, long before the complaint for modification was filed, and the decree of divorce was explicit that the payments ordered therein were in "full satisfaction" of the wife's claim for alimony. Barron v. Puzo, 415 Mass. at 56, 610 N.E.2d 973.

We next turn to DuMont v. Godbey, 382 Mass. at 234, 415 N.E.2d 188, in which the court held that a complaint for a division of property did not abate on the husband's death, where "the divorce decree [which entered in 1974] incorporated an agreement for alimony that may have survived the defendant's death" (emphasis supplied). While the husband was still alive, in 1978, his former wife brought a complaint for division of property pursuant to c. 208, § 34. He died during an adjournment of the trial. His then wife was appointed executrix of his estate and was substituted as defendant.

Citing cases which by reason of court decree or agreement permitted alimony to continue beyond death, the Supreme Judicial Court noted: "Thus the Probate Court could properly determine what, if any, payments were due after the death of the husband, and could modify its decree not only as to the future, but also as to arrears." Id. at 240, 415 N.E.2d 188. The court went on to hold, "[w]here no judgment for the assignment of property to the wife had been entered previously, we think the question whether such an assignment should be ordered was a question relative to alimony within the scope of G.L. c. 208, § 37. The action did not abate on the husband's death." Ibid. In Dumont, the entry of an order assigning property was considered a modification of the alimony award and was permitted after death. ⁸ The court explicitly stated that it was not deciding whether it would follow Gediman in a case where alimony had never been ordered. Id. at 240, 415 N.E.2d 188. Earlier in its opinion, the court, after discussing the new provisions of G.L. c. 208, § 34, permitting the assignment of property, had suggested that the "1974 reform provides an appropriate occasion for reconsideration of the rule as to alimony," which is that such actions ordinarily do not survive death. Id. at 238-239, 415 N.E.2d 188.

The amendments to the child support and divorce statutes since 1940, as we suggested earlier, provide an even more compelling reason to review the continued application of the Gediman...