Kahn v. Kahn
| Citation | 78 So.2d 367 |
| Parties | Shirley KAHN, Appellant, v. Leonard KAHN, Appellee. |
| Decision Date | 16 February 1955 |
| Court | Florida Supreme Court |
Roland W. Granat, Miami Beach, for appellant.
J. Ben Watkins (of Truett & Watkins), Tallahassee, and Carr & O'Quin, Miami, for appellee.
The plaintiff, appellant here, sought and obtained in the court below a divorce from her husband, the appellee here. On this appeal, the plaintiff complains only as to those portions of the decree which denied her request for alimony and required the cost of the litigation (except the Reporter's fee) to be paid out of the proceeds of the sale of certain property owned by the parties jointly, the remainder to be divided equally between them.
The parties were married several years ago while the plaintiff was in her 'teens. No children were born of the marriage. At the time the divorce decree was entered, the plaintiff was 25 years of age, and had a job paying her $30 per week. The defendant, who had a 50 percent service-connected disability for which the received $85.50 per month from the government, had a regular weekly take-home pay of $58.98. He made extra money for work at night and on holidays. In support of her claim of error respecting alimony, the plaintiff has brought here only a narrative statement of the record testimony showing the foregoing facts, together with the pleadings, the Master's Report, and the decree appealed from-her contention being that a wife who successfully sues her husband for divorce is automatically entitled to alimony under the rule stated in Montgomery v. Montgomery, Fla.1951, 52 So.2d 276, 277, that '* * * where the husband has caused the separation he should remain liable for support.' The problem is not quite that simple.
Since its original enactment in 1828, our statute has authorized the Chancellor to make such allowance for alimony to the wife 'as from the circumstances of the parties and nature of the case may be fit, equitable and just; * * *.' Section 65.08, Fla.Stat., F.S.A. The wife's need and the husband's ability to pay was at an early date established as the criterion by which to determine what alimony, if any, was to be awarded the wife. See Jacobs v. Jacobs, Fla.1951, 50 So.2d 169, and cases there cited. Thus, there was no need for alimony on the part of the wife if she had a separate estate 'adequate to her comfortable support.' Chaires v. Chaires, 1864, 10 Fla. 308, 315, citing Bright, on Husband and Wife, p. 359. Ordinarily, however, in those days the husband was the 'only hope of support' of an 'unfortunate wife, who may have been abandoned by a dissolute husband and doomed to drag out a weary existence in married widowhood. * * *' Chaires v. Chaires, supra. And, indeed, until recent years, a divorced wife had little prospect of being able to work and earn a livelihood, and it was essential to a well-ordered society that she be appropriately maintained by her estranged husband so that she would not become a charge on the community. Times have now changed. The broad, practically unlimited opportunities for women in the business world of today are a matter of common knowledge. Thus, in an era where the opportunities for self-support by the wife are so...
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...entitle the wife to be forever supported by a former husband who has little, if any, more economic advantages than she has.' (Kahn v. Kahn, 78 So.2d 367, 368 (Fla.).) * * * The abiding interest of the State is in the preservation of the family, and in maintaining it as a self-sufficient, in......
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