Marriage of Janssen, In re, 68917

• Citation: 348 N.W.2d 251
• Decision Date: 16 May 1984
• Docket Number: No. 68917,68917
• Parties: In re the MARRIAGE OF Gary W. JANSSEN and Susan K. Janssen. Upon the Petition of Gary W. Janssen, Appellee, and Concerning Susan K. Janssen, Appellant.
• Court: United States State Supreme Court of Iowa

Page 251

348 N.W.2d 251

In re the MARRIAGE OF Gary W. JANSSEN and Susan K. Janssen.

Upon the Petition of Gary W. Janssen, Appellee,

and Concerning Susan K. Janssen, Appellant.

No. 68917.

Supreme Court of Iowa.

May 16, 1984.

David Shinkle and Anna I. Shinkle of Shinkle & Shinkle, Des Moines, for appellant.

Jerrold B. Oliver and G. Stephen Walters of Webster, Jordan, Oliver & Walters, Winterset, for appellee.

Considered by UHLENHOPP, P.J., and HARRIS, McCORMICK, McGIVERIN, and LARSON, JJ.

UHLENHOPP, Justice.

This appeal involves the economic terms of a marriage dissolution decree. We review de novo. In re Marriage of Stuart, 252 N.W.2d 462 (Iowa 1977).

Gary W. and Susan K. Janssen were married in 1966. Neither had an appreciable amount of property. Susan had just completed college with very high grades, majoring in biology and chemistry. Gary had two more years toward a pharmacy degree. During those two years Gary had outside part-time work during the school year and full-time work in the summer, and Susan worked full time as a medical technologist. Following graduation in 1968, Gary served as a pharmacy interne and then as a pharmacist, and Susan worked four days weekly until she took two months off when the parties adopted Lori, their first child. Both parties helped with the housework.

In 1973 the parties sold their house for a profit of $5500 and moved to Des Moines. With this profit and $2500 from a bank loan, Gary began osteopathic school. He also worked part time as a pharmacist, and Susan worked from thirty-six to forty hours per week at the Clinical Pathology Laboratory. In December 1973 Gary entered into a contract with the armed forces whereby he received his tuition, books, and $400 per month in exchange for a later period of active duty.

After Gary completed osteopathic school Susan devoted her energies to the home and family and, until recently, did not work outside the home. The family moved to Ohio where Gary served his internship, and then to the Grand Forks Air Force Base where Gary fulfilled his military commitment. At that time the parties adopted Kristine, their second child.

In April 1980 the family moved to Winterset, Iowa, where Gary was employed by a partnership of three medical doctors at a starting annual salary of $55,000. The parties bought a home for $86,000 with no down payment. At time of trial this property had decreased slightly in value and the parties had practically no equity in it.

In March 1981 Gary bought a one-fourth interest in the medical partnership for $126,101.36. He paid his partners $75,000 of borrowed money, signed notes to them for an additional $15,000, and assumed one-fourth, or $36,101.26, of the partnership's debts. Later that year one of the partners withdrew in return for $22,000 cash (as his one-fourth share of the firm's equity in its assets) plus his share of accounts receivable of about $250,000, to be paid as the accounts are collected. A substantial number of the accounts appear to be uncollectible. The net result of this transaction was to raise the cost of Gary's present one-third interest in the firm to $144,814.16. The record contains evidence from which a finding could be made that the withdrawing doctor accepted the price he did because he strongly desired to leave. In any event, Gary testified at trial that his equity in the firm at that time was worth $60,000 on paper. The physical assets of the partnership in addition to equipment consist of a Winterset clinic which has fourteen examining rooms, a laboratory, an x-ray room, an emergency room, a waiting room, and three business-type offices; a clinic at Earlham which has three examining rooms, a laboratory, an x-ray room, and an office; and a rental residential property in Earlham next to the clinic. The firm draws patients from a large surrounding area, employs two physicians' assistants and eighteen other employees, and recently employed a fourth doctor at a salary of $60,000 per year plus his professional liability and health insurance premiums.

Gary's earnings from the firm were much mooted at trial. Although Gary endeavored to downgrade his income, substantial evidence indicates that by time of trial he was already in the annual range of $90,000 to $100,000. Ultimately, however, the question is not so much his current earnings as his earning capacity. With his background in pharmacy, his education in osteopathic medicine and surgery, his medical experience in the air force and in private practice, his industry, his health, and his favorable location, we would expect his income to rise in the future, depending on the amount of time he devotes to his practice.

About three months after Gary became a member of the partnership he commenced this action to dissolve the marriage and moved into an apartment. Susan had no funds of her own and realized she would have to return to work outside the home. After having begun to live on the scale of a physician's wife, she regarded medical technology as insufficiently remunerative. The parties disagree as to what she could earn as a technologist, from an annual low of about $14,000 to a high of about $28,000. In any event, Susan decided to enter the legal field. She achieved an outstanding result in her law school entrance test, and Drake Law School offered her the Leland Forest Scholarship--$4400 the first year and like sums the following two years if she is in the upper third of her class. She accepted Drake's offer.

The parties tried the dissolution case, and the trial court dissolved the marriage. The court awarded Susan custody of the two daughters; required Gary to pay $300 per month support for each child as well as their medical and dental insurance premiums; gave Gary the children as dependents for income tax purposes; granted Susan $600 per month alimony from Gary for thirty-nine months terminable sooner on her death, remarriage, or cohabitation with an adult male; transferred the home to Gary with the obligation to pay the mortgage; obligated Gary to pay the parties' considerable debts existing at the time of commencement of the dissolution action; gave...