Schroeder v. Schroeder
| Decision Date | 28 April 1964 |
| Docket Number | No. 328,328 |
| Citation | 200 A.2d 42,234 Md. 462 |
| Parties | Morris Edward SCHROEDER v. Pearl C. SCHROEDER. |
| Court | Maryland Court of Appeals |
Fred J. VanSlyke and Daniel S. Sullivan, Jr., Baltimore, for appellant.
Nelson R. Kerr, Towson (Nelson R. Kerr, Jr., Towson, on the brief), for appellee.
Before BRUNE, C. J., and HENDERSON, PRESCOTT, HORNEY and MARBURY, JJ.
Once again this term we are asked to construe an agreement between the parties to a divorce action to determine whether the payments set forth therein were in the nature of alimony and thus within the power of the equity court to modify. The divorce decree did not expressly refer to the agreement, but an amount equal to that provided for in the agreement was decreed to be paid the wife as alimony. The appellant petitioned the court to modify the payments on the ground that the financial condition of the parties had changed, but the chancellor dismissed the petition with prejudice since he was of the opinion the payments wer not alimony. The agreement provided for a periodic payment of $25 per week, payable until the wife died or remarried and stated that it is 'permanent alimony, subject to the further Order of the Court,' the wife further releasing the husband from any and all other claims which might otherwise be asserted for alimony or support.
The chancellor apparently accepted the position taken by the appellee, namely, that notwithstanding the recitation that the payments were alimony subject to court modification, since there was no specific mention that payments were to continue only during the joint lives of the parties, they were not alimony. The principal that payments must cease at the death of either party to constitute alimony reaches as far back as Wallingsford v. Wallingsford, 6 Har. & J. 485, and has been reiterated innumerable times in our decisions through the years. In the recently decided case of Stevens v. Stevens, 233 Md. 279, 196 A.2d 447, there was a similar provision in an agreement incorporated in a divorce decree that payments were to be made only so long as the wife was alive and unmarried. Nonetheless another proviso insured that payments would cease upon the husband's death by virtue of the wife's promise to release her husband's estate from all claims based on their prior marital status. We held the payments in the agreement to be alimony. On the other hand, in Grossman v. Grossman, 234 Md. 139, 198 A.2d 260, specific clauses of the agreement...
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