Hagstrom v. Hagstrom
| Decision Date | 08 January 1976 |
| Docket Number | No. 30539,30539 |
| Citation | 235 Ga. 853,221 S.E.2d 602 |
| Parties | Henry Theodore HAGSTROM, Jr. v. Pamela T. HAGSTROM. |
| Court | Georgia Supreme Court |
Dan E. McConaughey, John W. Hinchey, Atlanta, for appellant.
Russell G. Turner, Jr., Atlanta, for appellee.
This appeal is brought by Hagstrom, husband in a divorce action, from an order of the trial court relating to attorney fees for wife's attorney (hereinafter designated 'Attorney'). Attorney had represented wife during most of the negotiations leading to the divorce, but near the end, in one or more telephone calls, he had not showed himself willing to move to finalize the matter by a date by which the parties desired to conclude it. Further, wife testified at the hearing preceding the order appealed from that Attorney at that time refused to tell her what his fee would be, though Attorney testified that it was no secret that he wanted a fee of $2,000.00 for services rendered. Desiring to proceed with matters, wife discharged Attorney, reached an agreement with her husband by which, among other matters, each party undertook to be responsible for his or her own attorney fees, and on that basis a final divorce was granted March 21, 1975 and the agreement was made a part of the judgment of the court.
Following the final decree but within the same term of court, Attorney petitioned the trial court to order Hagstrom to pay him $2,000.00 and presumably to make that order a part of the divorce decree. After holding a hearing on the matter, the trial court ruled in favor of Attorney, and this is husband's appeal.
In seeking a $2,000.00 fee to be assessed against the husband in the trial court, Attorney cited and relied upon Head v. Aycock, 116 Ga.App. 739, 158 S.E.2d 685 (1967) and White v. Aiken, 197 Ga. 29, 28 S.E.2d 263 (1943), neither of which is authority for the result he seeks. In Head v. Aycock, supra, involving divorce and alimony, the attorney was discharged by his client, the wife, and unsuccessfully sought relief in the trial court asserting that he could not be discharged without being paid. The Court of Appeals, affirming the judgment, noted that he was fully protected by the trial court's order upholding the discharge but reserving to the conclusion of the case the question of any additional fee to which he might be entitled. This appeal by the former husband is easily distinguished from Head, in which the court ruled in effect that the appellant-attorney had nothing to complain of.
Though the court in Head quoted some language from White v. Aiken, supra, to the effect that the court should 'ordinarily' permit a client to discharge his attorney only after an order or other provision has been made protecting the attorney's claim, this language does not apply to a divorce and alimony claim. White involved a suit for an accounting (Aiken v. White, 69 Ga.App. 717, 26 S.E.2d 471 (1943)), and its ruling is based on the 'attorney's lien' law embodied in Code Ann. § 9-613(2). that Code section has no application to matters of alimony and counsel fees. Keefer v. Keefer, 140 Ga. 18(1), 78 S.E. 462 (1913). Indeed, the following headnote from Keefer is authority against Attorney's position here: 'Where a wife brought suit against her husband, alleging a permanent separation on account of misconduct on his part, and praying for permanent alimony and for an allowance as temporary alimony and counsel fees, and pending the case, but before the...
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