Langston v. Langston

• Court: Maryland Supreme Court
• Writing for the Court: BATTAGLIA.
• Citation: Langston v. Langston, 366 Md. 490, 784 A.2d 1086 (Md. 2001)
• Decision Date: 13 November 2001
• Docket Number: No. 18,18
• Parties: Lori K. LANGSTON, v. Gary W. LANGSTON.

784 A.2d 1086

366 Md. 490

Lori K. LANGSTON, v. Gary W. LANGSTON.

No. 18, Sept. Term, 2001.

Court of Appeals of Maryland.

November 13, 2001.

Allen J. Kruger (Law Offices of Allen J. Kruger, P.A., Laurel,) on brief, for petitioner.

Cynthia E. Young, Annapolis, (Jo Benson Fogel of Jo Benson Fogel, P.A., Rockville,) all on brief, for respondent.

Argued before BELL, C.J., and ELDRIDGE, RAKER, WILNER, CATHELL, HARRELL and BATTAGLIA, JJ BATTAGLIA, Judge.

We granted a writ of certiorari to determine whether alimony payments may be modified retroactively, i.e. to a date prior to the filing of a pleading seeking such modification. The petitioner, Lori K. Langston, here challenges the decision of the Court of Special Appeals which held that respondent, Gary W. Langston, M.D., could obtain such retroactive modification of alimony payments.

I. Facts

Gary W. Langston, M.D., respondent, and Lori K. Langston, petitioner, were married in Montgomery County on November 7, 1988. Lori did not work outside the home while married, but instead cared for the four children who were born during the course of their marriage.

The parties voluntarily separated on January 8, 1997, and entered into a Separation and Property Settlement Agreement on June 10, 1997.¹ As a part of the Agreement, the respondent received sole custody of the couple's four children, while the petitioner received visitation. The parties agreed to pay child support jointly, commensurate with their abilities. The Agreement also established the following schedule of alimony payments from respondent to petitioner:

... the sum of $8,000.00 per month for the first year; the sum of $7,000.00 per month for the second year; the sum of $6,000.00 per month for the third year; the sum of $5,000.00 per month for the fourth and fifth years; and the sum of $4,000.00 per month [for] the sixth through tenth years. Alimony payment[s] shall account from and the first payment shall be due on April 1, 1997. The alimony payments shall continue only as long as the parties live separate and apart and shall terminate (except as to accrued arrears, if any) upon the first to occur of any one of the following events: the death of Wife, the remarriage of Wife, death of Husband, or the expiration of ten years.

Section V(a) of the Separation Agreement (June 10, 1997). The Agreement further provided:

The alimony provisions of this paragraph are subject to the further order of the court and may be modified AS TO AMOUNT ONLY based proportionally on any increase or decrease in the Husbands [sic] gross income using calendar year 1996 as a base year. The alimony provisions with respect to terminating events or date may not be modified by any court of competent jurisdiction.

Section V(c) of the Separation Agreement (emphasis in original).

On August 12, 1997, the respondent filed in the Circuit Court for Montgomery County for an absolute divorce and requested that the Separation and Property Settlement Agreement be incorporated into the judgment of absolute divorce. The Circuit Court granted the absolute divorce and respondent's request for incorporation on March 30, 1998.

Within a few weeks, on May 4, 1998, respondent's counsel sent a letter to petitioner's counsel, stating that the respondent had experienced a substantial decrease in income during 1998. As a result of his diminished financial status, the respondent hoped to reach an agreement with petitioner on a reduction in alimony so as to avoid further expenses associated with an application to the court. The petitioner did not respond to the letter. Instead, she filed a Motion for Contempt against the respondent on June 16, 1998, asserting that he failed to make complete payments of the $8,000.00 per month alimony award. The respondent answered the motion by iterating that he had experienced a substantial loss in income in 1998 relative to the level of income reported as the base year (1996) in the parties' Separation Agreement. The respondent contemporaneously filed a Counter Motion for Modification of Alimony on September 18, 1998, wherein he requested, pursuant to Section 11-107(b) of the Family Law Article, that the court retroactively modify the amount of alimony payable to the petitioner under the Separation Agreement, from the time of his initial income diminution in 1998.

The trial court heard arguments on the parties' motions on January 29, 1999. At that time, the parties agreed that the respondent would make reduced payments of alimony beginning in February of 1999. What remained for the trial court's determination was the amount for which the respondent was accountable for the period of May 1998 to February 1999, in light of the respondent's assertion that his 1998 income ($152,699.00) was a substantial reduction from his 1996 annual income ($751,219.00), the base income level under the terms of the Separation Agreement.²

The trial court ruled that Section V(c) of the Separation Agreement did not prohibit retroactive modification of the alimony payments irrespective of when the respondent filed his motion for modification with the court. The court stated that so long as the respondent "is able to establish by the evidence the date of decrease in his gross income, and it is the date of decrease that is issued for modification purposes and it is not affected by when he filed with the court, so I would accept the argument of [respondent] on that issue."³ Therefore, on March 8, 1999,⁴ the trial court entered an order stating that the respondent did not owe the petitioner any arrearage in alimony payments; the court further established that for January and February of 1999, the respondent should pay $1,697 per month in alimony, and commencing on March 1, 1999, he should pay $1,273 in alimony per month.

The petitioner filed a Notice for In Banc Review of the trial court's decision that she was not entitled to recoup arrearages in alimony for the period from May of 1998 through September of 1998, and that the respondent could retroactively modify his alimony payments to a period prior to his filing a formal request for such relief.

A hearing was held on November 19, 1999 in front of a three judge panel.⁵ The in banc court, in a 2-1 decision, reversed the trial judge's finding regarding the arrearage owed under the Separation Agreement. The majority stated:

Maryland case law and Maryland statutes govern support and modification of support, and the law provides that parties to a divorce can enter into agreements as to support and modification of support, and in certain cases those agreements would supersede what the law otherwise provides.

* * *

The parties contracted away any jurisdiction on the part of the Court to consider a modification of this support.

* * *

If the parties had said in this agreement that a change in the support would be automatic, based on changes in his income, that would be one thing, but this agreement does not say that changes in support are automatic.

It provides specifically that it is subject to further order of Court ... [it] is not an automatic modification ... Maryland law is that a Court cannot modify support prior to the filing of a petition to do so, and nothing in this agreement changes that.

In other words, they didn't contract away that provision of the law by making it automatic based on certain things.

So it is the opinion of the majority that the Court did not have the jurisdiction to modify the amount of support prior to the filing of a petition requesting the Court to do so.

The majority of the in banc panel found that the only effective date for modification of the alimony payments would be the date that the respondent actually filed his petition to reduce alimony (i.e. September of 1998), rather than the May, 1998, starting point. Therefore, on February 8, 2000, the in banc panel ordered that the respondent pay the petitioner $29,200.00, representing alimony for the period of May, 1998, through September, 1998.

The respondent appealed this decision to the Court of Special Appeals, asking the court to consider whether a party could unilaterally modify his alimony payments without a court order based on the party's decline in income or, in the alternative, whether the court could order modification of the alimony payment to a date preceding the filing of a formal petition seeking such modification. Langston v. Langston, 136 Md.App. 203, 209, 764 A.2d 378, 381 (2000). The Court of Special Appeals set forth its holding as follows:

... we agree with the in banc panel that the Agreement does not permit Dr. Langston to reduce his alimony obligation without a court order. We also concur with the in banc panel that the terms of the Agreement do not permit modification of alimony retroactive to a date preceding the filing of a request. Therefore, we reject the trial judge's conclusion to the contrary. To be sure, the parties could have included such terms in their Agreement, but they failed to do so.

We disagree, however, with the in banc panel's conclusion that Maryland statutory law bars modification of alimony retroactive to a date preceding the filing of a request. Although that view seems to be the general perception among lawyers and the bench, we believe that Maryland law makes such a determination a matter for the trial court in the exercise of its discretion.

Id. at 222, 764 A.2d at 388. Thus, the Court of Special Appeals affirmed in part the in banc panel's decision that the terms of the Separation Agreement did not permit retroactive modification and vacated in part the in banc panel's determination that retroactive modification was not permissible under Maryland statutory law, remanding the case to the trial court for further proceedings. Id.

Dissatisfied with the Court of Special Appeals's holding, the petitioner filed a Petition for a Writ of Certiorari, which we granted to consider whether alimony may be modified to a date prior to the filing of a pleading seeking...