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Simonds v. Simonds, No. 280, September Term, 2004

DOMESTIC RELATIONS; DIVORCE; RESOLVING THE DEPENDENT SPOUSE'S CLAIM FOR INDEFINITE ALIMONY: Under Solomon v. Solomon, 383 Md. 176 (2004), on the question of whether there is an unconscionable disparity in the parties' post-divorce lifestyles, one of the issues that the circuit court must consider is the issue of whether and/or the extent to which the dependent spouse's contributions to the marriage allowed the other spouse to achieve his or her present earning potential. The starting point for such an evaluation is the determination of each party's income earning potential (1) as of the day that they were married, and (2) as of the day of their divorce.

REPORTED IN THE COURT OF SPECIAL APPEALS OF MARYLAND No. 280 September Term, 2004 ___________________________________

SUSAN SIMONDS

v.

ROBERT SIMONDS

___________________________________ Murphy, C.J., Adkins, Sharer, JJ. ____________________________________ Opinion by Murphy, C.J. Concurring Opinion by Adkins, J. ____________________________________ Filed: November 18, 2005

Judges and lawyers are often confronted with the difficult process of determining precisely how a legal principle that is easy to state should be applied to a particular set of facts. Over fifty years ago, Dean McCormick declared that cases dealing with the admissibility of "other crimes evidence" are "as numerous as the sands of the sea." 307 n.2. McCormick, Evidence, 1954, p.

In Judge Weinstein's Evidence treatise, he comments

that "the question of when evidence of a particular criminal act may be admitted is so perplexing that the cases sometimes seem as numerous `as the sands of the sea' and often cannot be reconciled." (1978). 2 Weinstein's Evidence, P 404(08), p. 404-40

In York v. State, 315 Md. 578 (1989), while affirming

the denial of a motion for new trial, the Court of Appeals stated: All in all, we are constrained to conclude that the courts generally play by ear with an ad hoc approach whether the newly discovered evidence calls for a new trial, no matter what words they use to describe the standard alleged to support the decision. It seems that they actually lean on the assertion, which has become a cliche, regarding hardcore pornography made by Justice Stewart, concurring in Jacobellis v. Ohio, 378 U.S. 184, 197 (1964): "I know it when I see it." Id. at 586-87. These observations are equally applicable to

cases that involve the principal issue in the case at bar: whether a dependent spouse is entitled to "rehabilitative"

alimony or "indefinite" alimony.1 The parties to this appeal from the Circuit Court for Montgomery County -- Susan Simonds, appellant, and Robert Simonds, appellee -- were divorced by a judgment of absolute divorce entered on March 6, 2004. That judgment included an

award of "rehabilitative" alimony to appellant, who argued for an award of "indefinite" alimony. Appellant now argues to us that,

in deciding the financial issues raised by the parties, the circuit court made seven erroneous rulings: I. The trial court erred in denying Ms. Simonds' claim for indefinite alimony, by failing to make required findings about whether Ms. Simonds is capable of becoming self-supporting, the time necessary for her to become so, and whether, after making as much progress as she could reasonably be expected to make before becoming self-supporting, an unconscionable disparity would not still exist between the parties respective standards of living. The court erred in denying indefinite alimony and awarding Ms. Simonds only rehabilitative alimony for three years in a decreasing amount, given the vast disparity in the parties' incomes, the duration of the marriage, the grounds for divorce, Ms. Simonds' significant hiatus from the workforce to care for the children, her continuing childcare responsibilities, the specific finding that she was not voluntarily

II.

The cases that have dealt with this issue are collected and analyzed in Fader, J. and Gilbert, R., Maryland Family Law,

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