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Title: James T. Neveau v. Patsy L. Neveau
Author : Court of Appeals of Idaho No. 13896
Release Date : January 12, 1982
Genre: Law,Books,Professional & Technical,
Pages : * pages
Size : 60 KB

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In this case we encounter a wife's alimony claim, drifting in the wake of Orr v. Orr, 440 U.S. 268, 99 S.Ct. 1102, 59 L.Ed.2d 306 (1979). In Orr the United States Supreme Court held unconstitutional, for denial of equal protection, an Alabama statute providing that wives, but not husbands, could receive alimony upon divorce. Because Idaho's then-existing alimony statute[Footnote 1] similarly discriminated on the basis of sex, the presiding magistrate in this case assumed that Orr had torn the wife's alimony claim from its statutory moorings. Accordingly, the magistrate denied alimony based upon the statute, but he cast the wife a rescue line by awarding her the functional equivalent of alimony under general equitable principles. On appeal from the magistrate division, the district court cut the magistrate's rescue line by deciding that support to a former spouse was strictly a creature of statute. However, the district court cast the wife another rescue line, noting that a gender-neutral maintenance statute[Footnote 2] had been enacted while the appeal was pending, and holding that the new statute could be applied to the wife's claim. The magistrate's equitable award was reversed, but the cause was remanded for consideration of maintenance. Both parties have appealed the district court's order.