Wassif v. Wassif

• Decision Date: 01 September 1988
• Docket Number: No. 651,651
• Citation: Wassif v. Wassif, 551 A.2d 935, 77 Md.App. 750 (Md. App. 1988)
• Court: Court of Special Appeals of Maryland
• Parties: Patricia Lynn WASSIF v. Anis M. WASSIF. ,

Page 750

77 Md.App. 750

551 A.2d 935

Patricia Lynn WASSIF v. Anis M. WASSIF.

No. 651, Sept. Term, 1988.

Court of Special Appeals of Maryland.

Jan. 11, 1989.

Stuart N. Braiterman (Diane G. Goldsmith, on the brief), Baltimore, for appellant.

J. Seymour Sureff, Baltimore, for appellee.

Argued before MOYLAN, KARWACKI and ROSALYN B. BELL, JJ.

MOYLAN, Judge.

The appellant, Patricia Lynn Wassif (Wife), and the appellee, Anis M. Wassif (Husband), were married on December 21, 1970. On February 26, 1987, the Wife filed a complaint for an absolute divorce and other relief in the Circuit Court for Anne Arundel County. A decree was signed by the court on December 22, 1987, awarding the Wife an absolute divorce. The decree, in addition, awarded to the Wife rehabilitative alimony of $500 per week for three years care and custody of the couple's three minor children; child support in the amount of $200 per week per child; use and possession of the marital home and personal property therein for three years; a marital award in the amount of $83,976.50; and a 1981 Cadillac. The decree further provided that the Husband will be entitled to claim one of the minor children as a dependent on his income tax returns and that each of the parties will pay his or her own attorney's fees. The Wife has filed an appeal from the court's decree, and the Husband has filed a cross-appeal.

The circumstances that led to the divorce are not at issue here. The Husband does not contest the granting of a divorce to the Wife on grounds of adultery. Instead, the Wife and the Husband, on the appeal and cross-appeal, respectively, contest various provisions of the divorce decree dealing with monetary and property matters.

ALIMONY

The Husband, a native of Egypt, is an anesthesiologist. He emigrated to the United States in 1970 and married his wife in December of that year, when he was in the last month of his internship at South Baltimore General Hospital. Since 1974, he has worked at North Arundel Hospital.

The Wife, a Maryland native, completed high school and then received certification as an X-ray technician at South Baltimore General Hospital. She worked as an X-ray technician for some nine months before she became pregnant with her first child and stopped work in 1972. Before obtaining a position as an X-ray technician, she had worked as a bank teller. During the course of their marriage, the parties had three children, who were ages 14, 13, and 6 at the time of the divorce.

Although the Wife did not work outside of the home after she became pregnant, she did, in addition to raising the children and maintaining the house, work at home as a secretary to her husband. In 1976, the Husband left the professional group with which he had been associated and formed his own professional association, which he operated out of the marital home at 8 Sonora Drive in Pasadena. The Wife did his billing and bookkeeping and continued in that capacity until March, 1987. The Husband's gross fees from his medical practice were $270,000 in 1983; $332,000 in 1984; $348,000 in 1985; $369,000 in 1986; and $410,000 in 1987.

At the time of the divorce, the Wife was 36 years of age. Her certification as an X-ray technician had lapsed. She had returned to school, however, on a part-time basis at Anne Arundel Community College and was working on an A.A. Degree. She testified that she hopes to go on and get a B.A. Degree in Business Administration and thereby become employable in that area.

The Wife contends that the court abused its discretion in failing to award her indefinite alimony and that the $500 per week of rehabilitative alimony which the court awarded to her for three years was too low in comparison to the Husband's "unconscionably disparate" income. On the other hand, the Husband, on his cross-appeal, maintains that the amount of alimony decreed is excessive.

The purpose of alimony is to provide financial support to an economically dependent spouse until that spouse becomes self-supporting. Md.Fam.Law Code Ann. § 11-106(c)(2) provides, however, that the court may award alimony for an indefinite period under certain circumstances:

"(c) Award for indefinite period --The court may award alimony for an indefinite period, if the court finds that:

* * *

(2) even after the party seeking alimony will have made as much progress toward becoming self-supporting as can reasonably be expected, the respective standards of living of the parties will be unconscionably disparate."

Indefinite alimony may thus be warranted where it would be impractical to expect the dependent spouse to become self-supporting through further education or training or where rehabilitative alimony for a limited time would result in gross inequity. Holston v. Holston, 58 Md.App. 308, 473 A.2d 459 (1984).

In this case, the trial judge awarded the Wife alimony of $500 per week for three years rather than for an unlimited period of time because he found that "she will have a substantial capital basis on which to build to provide her current income" from the sale of numerous Ocean City condominiums which were owned by the parties as tenants by the entireties during the marriage and which are now owned as tenants in common. The Husband contends that one-half of the proceeds from the sale of these condominiums and the marital home will net the Wife over $500,000.

The fact remains, however, that these condominiums (which have a negative cash flow) have not yet been sold. Whatever income the proceeds will generate is, therefore, uncertain. The Wife, furthermore, does not have any other significant income-generating assets. The only income that she now has is that generated by the marital award, which is being paid to her in installments over a three-year period. She is unemployed and has not worked outside of the home since 1972. She does not have much education beyond high school and does not have any skill which would qualify her for more than a modest-paying job. In some two years hence, when the rehabilitative alimony which the court awarded is due to end, the Wife will still not have any significantly greater marketable skill. The testimony of a rehabilitation expert was that upon completion of her two-year degree at the community college, her earnings as an office manager will still be grossly disproportionate to those of her husband, whose salary for the corporate year ending August 31, 1987, was $276,300. The expert testified:

"The first year earnings as a radiological technician average approximately thirteen thousand dollars, an office manager would average around fifteen thousand ...and compares with an anesthesiologist for the approximate wages that were obtained on records was about four hundred thousand dollars for Dr. Wassif. Projected five years using a conservative ten percent increase in earnings over the five year potential, and including an increase in the third year as a radiological technician certifying her as a class B, which is actually greater than a ten percent increase, the fifth year earning potential would go to nineteen thousand dollars if she were able to be a radiological technologist, twenty two thousand dollars if she was an office manager, as opposed to if we take the projected earnings of Dr. Wassif over the five year period of time on a ten percent increase. It would be five hundred and eighty five thousand dollars. It would be roughly twenty six times potential earnings between that of Mrs. Wassif to her spouse, Dr. Wassif." (Emphasis added.)

The situation herein is very much like that in Holston v. Holston, supra. In that case, the husband, a professor at the University of Maryland Dental School, had an income in excess of $85,000 per year at the time of trial while the wife, re-entering the job market after 15 years, would have been able to earn $13,000 per year. The trial court awarded the wife alimony for three years at a rate of $150 per week. In finding that the trial court abused its discretion in failing to award the wife indefinite alimony, we there said, at 58 Md.App. 322-323, 473 A.2d 459:

"At the time of the divorce, Dr. Holston was an assistant professor at the University of Maryland Dental School. He also practiced dentistry through a faculty practice program at the school and held numerous consulting positions. His gross income was $87,880 in 1981 and $86,343 in 1982. Mrs. Holston, on the other hand, has not been employed since June 1967. She attended Mount St. Agnes College for approximately a year-and-a-half before gaining employment as a secretary. Her only employment experience has been as a secretary. When she left the job market in 1967, she was earning $5,000 per year as a secretary at the University of Maryland Medical School. At the time of trial, secretaries at the university were earning approximately $13,000 per year. Even if appellant, re-entering the job market after fifteen years, would be able to gain employment at a similar salary, her earnings would be less than 15 per cent those of appellee. There is nothing in the evidence to indicate that appellant would ever be able to eliminate or even substantially diminish such disparity. Assuming appellant used her three years of alimony to return to college, receive a degree and acquire a marketable skill, it is questionable whether after graduation she could earn a salary even approaching appellee's earnings. Compounding the difficulty of obtaining an education and a marketable skill is the necessity to provide and care for five minor children. Reading the record, we see no reason to expect that if alimony terminates after three years the respective standards of living of the parties would not then be 'unconscionably disparate.' "

See also Benkin v. Benkin, 71 Md.App. 191, 524 A.2d 789 (1987).

Although we see no abuse of discretion in the amount of the alimony awarded--$500 per week, we hold that the trial judge did abuse his discretion in limiting the alimony to a...