Marriage of Wright, In re

• Decision Date: 19 July 1976
• Citation: 131 Cal.Rptr. 870,60 Cal.App.3d 253
• Court: California Court of Appeals Court of Appeals
• Parties: In re the MARRIAGE OF Philip Webster and Jane Ann WRIGHT. Philip Webster WRIGHT, Petitioner and Appellant, v. Jane Ann WRIGHT, Respondent and Respondent. Civ. 46877.

Page 870

131 Cal.Rptr. 870

60 Cal.App.3d 253

In re the MARRIAGE OF Philip Webster and Jane Ann WRIGHT Philip Webster WRIGHT, Petitioner and Appellant, v. Jane Ann WRIGHT, Respondent and Respondent.

Civ. 46877.

Court of Appeal, Second District, Division 5, California.

July 19, 1976.

Paul Augustine, J., Newport Beach, for petitioner and appellant.

Hitt & Murray, Anthony Murray and Brian C. Cuff, Long Beach, for respondent.

KAUS, Presiding Justice.

Petitioner Philip Wright appeals from portions of an interlocutory judgment of dissolution of marriage. Respondent is Jane Wright.

FACTS

The parties were married in 1957 and separated in March 1973. Jane, a housewife, was 37 years old, and Philip, a surgeon, was 39 years old when they separated. They have four children, born in 1958, 1961, 1963, and 1966.

The couple met when they were both students at Occidental College. Jane obtained a teaching credential and began to teach. Then they moved to Chicago, where Philip attended medical school and Jane worked. To children were born in Chicago. They then moved to Los Angeles where Philip interned at U.C.L.A., and then was a resident for five years at Harbor General Hospital. Jane was last employed in 1963. The third and fourth children were born in 1963 and 1966.

When Philip was drafted by the Navy, the family moved to the Philippines in 1967, where they lived for two years. They returned to California in 1969 and Philip became associated with a medical firm as a heart surgeon. Philip's partnership arrangements with the medical firm were terminated in June 1973, after the couple separated. He set up his own practice and hired a surgeon.

The litigation involved in the dissolution was protracted. Although the community property created no particular difficulties--it amounted to only $56,000, including the equity in the family home--the extent of Philip's earning was a problem. A 'short cause' trial scheduled for July 1974 was continued to October 1974, when it developed that both parties had been incorrectly advised as to Philip's income. Extensive discovery followed, including taking the deposition of Philip's associate. An attempt to subpoena business records of the associate was resisted, in part successfully. The trial was not held until November 1974. It consumed several days.

The trial court found that Philip's 'net income' was 'in the range of $115,000' a year; that Jane needed support in the amount of $2,000 a month and that the children needed support in the amount of $200 per month per child. It found that Jane 'has a potential for employment as a teacher, but will require considerable training to reach that potential and is not now employable.' It found that Jane's attorneys performed necessary legal services having a value of $20,000 and that Jane was unable to pay those fees.

The judgment ordered Philip to pay Jane $2,000 a month in spousal support for a period of ten years 'until remarriage . . . death . . . or until further order of court,' and $1,500 per month thereafter on the same conditions, and $200 per month per child in child support. The court also ordered Philip to pay $20,165 to Jane's attorneys.

Philip appeals only from those portions of the judgment awarding Jane spousal support and fees to her attorneys. ¹

Facts will be added in the discussion.

DISCUSSION

Philip contend that the trial court abused its discretion both in awarding excessive spousal support to Jane and in failing to set a termination date for such spousal support 'in the near future.'

Philip's complaint concerning the amount of spousal support awarded Jane is without merit. His net income, at the time of the dissolution, was somewhere between $100,000 and $130,000 per year, depending on whose figures one accepts. Although, as Philip points out, the trial court accepted Jane's estimated expenditures for herself and the children almost to the penny--excepting only an item for psychiatric treatment for the children--these figures were not exorbitant, having in mind the free-spending life-style to which the parties had become accustomed. Arguments that Jane could do with fewer flights to relatives to San Francisco, less recreation, or less expensive clothing are, and were, properly addressed to the trial judge. Even Philip's allegedly more 'realistic' figures would reduce the total figure by only $355 a month.

As far as providing for an early termination of spousal support is concerned, we find no authority that such termination was required as a matter of law. Certainly our opinion in In re Marriage of Dennis, 35 Cal.App.3d 279, 285, 110 Cal.Rptr. 619, where we said that retention of jurisdiction should be the norm after a lengthy marriage, gives no support to Philip's position. While Dennis was gently questioned in In re Marriage of Patrino, 36 Cal.App.3d 186, 189, 111 Cal.Rptr....