Waskin v. Waskin, 85-1606

• Decision Date: 18 February 1986
• Docket Number: No. 85-1606,85-1606
• Citation: 484 So.2d 1277,11 Fla. L. Weekly 497
• Parties: 11 Fla. L. Weekly 497 Gloria WASKIN, Appellant, v. Robert R. WASKIN, Appellee.
• Court: Florida District Court of Appeals

Page 1277

484 So.2d 1277

11 Fla. L. Weekly 497

Gloria WASKIN, Appellant, v. Robert R. WASKIN, Appellee.

No. 85-1606.

District Court of Appeal of Florida Third District.

Feb. 18, 1986.

Rehearing Denied April 2, 1986.

Bernard B. Weksler, Coral Gables, for appellant.

Norman S. Klein and Alan D. Sackrin and Linda A. Fenner, North Miami Beach, for appellee.

Before HENDRY, NESBITT and DANIEL S. PEARSON, JJ.

DANIEL S. PEARSON, Judge.

If, as the cases tell us, the clean hands doctrine prevents a court of equity from relieving a former husband of his obligation to pay alimony to his former wife where the decrease in the former husband's financial ability to pay (the requisite substantial change in circumstances) has been brought about by the former husband's voluntary acts of, for example, permitting a thriving medical practice to be closed down and making no effort to seek other employment, see Kalmutz v. Kalmutz, 299 So.2d 30 (Fla. 4th DCA 1974); increasing his spending, Coe v. Coe, 352 So.2d 559 (Fla. 2d DCA 1977); or otherwise willfully divesting himself of the ability to pay, Bowen v. Bowen, 471 So.2d 1274 (Fla.1985), then, most assuredly, the clean hands doctrine should have prevented the entry of the order under review which, inter alia, reduced the former husband's alimony and child support obligations established by the 1976 final judgment of dissolution as modified on appeal ¹ and as upwardly modified by the trial court in 1980.

We have no quarrel with the trial judge's finding that Robert Waskin showed "a substantial decrease in his financial ability dating back to October of 1983." Certainly there is ample evidence to support his findings that, beginning in October 1983, Waskin spent $70,000 ($35,000 of which was borrowed from his sister) in newly-incurred attorneys' fees and lost a substantial number of patients and staff privileges at nursing homes and hospitals, which losses caused a severe drop in Waskin's income and thus his ability to meet certain existing obligations. The trial judge's conclusion, however, that this extraordinary expenditure on attorneys' fees and the reduction in income from the medical practice were matters beyond Waskin's control is, in our view, totally unwarranted.

The events of October 1983 which led to Waskin's subsequent financial ills are fully recounted in our recent opinion in State v. Waskin, 481 So.2d 492 (Fla. 3d DCA 1985). There we reversed the dismissal of a criminal information charging Waskin with soliciting someone to murder his former wife, Gloria Waskin, the appellant here. In resurrecting the charge and returning the case for trial, we set out in detail the conversation between Waskin and the prospective hitman (in actuality, Tom Tretola, an undercover police officer), a conversation which, we noted, Waskin conceded took place. We concluded that

"[t]he conversation between the defendant and Tretola in the present case is, at the very least, susceptible of being understood by reasonable fact-finders as meaning that the defendant requested or encouraged, if not actually hired, Tretola to murder the ex-Mrs. Waskin. The fact that the time of performance was not agreed upon or even that it was postponed for several months, or that payment of money was not immediately made, does not mean that no request or encouragement occurred, or even that no agreement--hiring--had taken place.... Indeed it appears that the defendant's request to postpone the hit was not occasioned by any disagreement about the figure of $10,000, but rather was motivated by the defendant's professed need to have sufficient time to amass the cash for payment without calling attention to his plan by borrowing. Where, as here, the defendant clearly requested that Tretola do away with his ex-wife, neither the lack of agreement about the price, or lack of payment, makes any difference."

State v. Waskin, 481 So.2d at 498 (emphasis in original).

As a result of Waskin's request that Tretola do away with the former Mrs. Waskin, Waskin was arrested and charged; as a result of the charge, he hired an attorney and paid him $70,000; and, as a result of the attendant publicity, he lost patients and institutional affiliations, and thus income....