O Pfannenstiehl! Part 2: No Wonder We’re All Confused (The Appeals Court Doesn’t Even Agree With Itself)

At least they aren't throwing food at each other, or publicly calling each other names, as the current U.S. Supreme Court is wont to do. In our last blog entry, we discussed the interesting turn in this appeal, from a minority of 1, to a majority of 3 justices, in search of consensus of all Massachusetts Appeals Court, taking this important case away from the judges who heard it, in favor of a majority of the overall bench.

But, the reconstituted majority opinion doesn’t even agree with itself. Here’s why.

Almost casually, the prevailing opinion concluded that:

1. the husband’s beneficial trust interest is a marital asset;
2. the husband’s interest is worth 1/11 of the [presumably gross] corpus;
3. that the wife’s share of the husband’s interest is 60% thereof; and
4. the husband (in addition to yielding 60% of the non-trust assets) should pay out the wife’s share of his trust interest, in cash, over a 2-year period.

This, despite the fact that the husband is part of a beneficiary class that is open to expansion, and that the trust (no matter how indifferently administered in the past) provides no apparent means by which the husband could compel distributions to pay out the required sums to the wife.

But having concluded and implicitly ruled that the husband could make the required payments…

The court then proceeded to vacate the trial court’s judgment of contempt, in which she found the husband guilty, after he stopped paying the monthly sum to the wife. The reason: that he did not have the ability to pay because the trustees had declined to distribute the funds.
Thus, in the same decision, the Appeals Court ruled that:

1. The husband as an enforceable right to receive distributions, which gives him the ability to pay out the required sum; and
2. Because the trustees refused to make distributions that the court concluded he can compel, the wife cannot enforce judgment.

At least, the trial court had the courage of its conviction.

So, what does this opinion do for Mrs. Pfannenstiehl, as a practical matter? We’ll tackle that in our next entry.

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