1 Conn. App. 578 | Conn. App. Ct. | 1984
This case concerns the enforceability in Connecticut of an out-of-state contempt order. The plaintiff's action was brought pursuant to General Statutes
The facts are not in dispute. The marriage of the parties was dissolved in the state of Georgia in 1970. A separation agreement, incorporated in the judgment, provided for payment by the defendant husband of the expenses of a minor child until age twenty-one, and of his expenses while attending college until age twenty-two, unless he had sooner graduated from college. The plaintiff sought, by her action in Connecticut, to enforce the original judgment as well as a 1978 contempt order of the Georgia court. That order required the defendant to pay for the college expenses of his son for the 1978 Fall quarter and to pay for each quarter thereafter as required by the original judgment. The Connecticut trial court granted the defendant's motion to dismiss the plaintiff's contempt proceeding insofar as it related to the 1970 judgment.2 The plaintiff's motion *580
for contempt, relating to the Georgia court's 1978 contempt order, was granted pursuant to General Statutes
On appeal,3 the defendant claims error in the trial court's effectuation of the 1978 contempt order, claiming that Connecticut public policy retroactively prohibits the enforcement of orders involving children over the age of eighteen even if the orders were consonant with our public policy when rendered. The defendant further argues that the 1978 contempt order of Georgia could only be enforced if the decree upon which the order was based was found to be enforceable.
Cases are judicial building blocks. In order to determine if Connecticut courts may enforce the valid contempt orders of other states, relating to child support orders entered pursuant to written agreements for support after eighteen years of age and incorporated into dissolution decrees, a review of relevant prior decisions and statutes is necessary.
In 1970, the date of the dissolution of the marriage of the parties, support orders for children to age twenty-one were not violative of any statute and were common in Connecticut. On and after October 1, 1972, however, the age of majority in Connecticut became eighteen years.4 *581
After that date, support orders for "minor children" terminated as a matter of law upon the attainment of age eighteen. Simon v. Simon,
From 1970 to at least the date of the contempt order of the Georgia court in 1978, Georgia law allowed and enforced court decrees which provided for child support to age twenty-one. McClain v. McClain,
The issue of the present case is whether "public policy," as those words are used in General Statutes
Public policy is akin to the public good or the public welfare. It varies as the interests and goals of society are modified. Hayes v. Beresford,
Connecticut public policy does not prohibit the enforcement of a foreign contempt order, requiring a defendant to pay for support of a child beyond the age of eighteen years pursuant to an agreement which is incorporated in a dissolution decree executed in another *584 state and which agreement, as to support payments, is consonant with the laws of that state both as of the date of the dissolution and as of the date of the contempt order. The original decree was obviously enforceable in Georgia and was, in fact, enforced by the Georgia contempt order. The fact that the Connecticut trial court found the original judgment to be unenforceable in Connecticut as it related to repayment for expenses which might have been due under it, does not alter the rectitude of the decision to enforce the contempt order.
There is no error.
In this opinion the other judges concurred.