Once-wed lesbian loses alimony

By Lawrence van Gelder

• New York Times

NEW YORK-Like many another man involved in separation or divorce, John Smith signed an agreement in 1972, promising to pay alimony to his wife, Jane, "until such time as she

remarries or dies.”

Four years later, he discovered his

wife in a sexual relationship with anothin the assumptions that underlie the stipulation":

er woman.

In a recently reported decision, a judge in St. Paul ruled that this "apparently stable love relationship with a ing Smith's obligation to pay alimony to woman friend" was cause for terminat-

Mrs. Smith.

The decision by a trial court is not being appealed and is not regarded as the sort of ruling that constitutes important legal precedent.

Both the executive director of the National Gay Task Force and the president of America's Society of Divorced Men praised the judge. And an authority on family law suggested that economic need rather than sexual orientation should be the criterion by which the continuation of alimony be gauged.

Judge Joseph P. Summers of the District Court of the State of Minnesota, in his decision in the unusual case of the Smiths (not the couple's name), wrote: "There is nothing in the relative financial conditions of the parties which would justify a termination of alimony.

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'Alimony which has been awarded pursuant to stipulation will be terminated only on the basis of a substantial change in circumstances in one or both parties," he noted, before deciding that there had indeed been a “basic change

"Defendant has discovered that her

sexual orientation is lesbian. She has entered into an apparently stable love relationship with a woman friend.

"

"At the time of the 1972 divorce, plaintiff could have realistically assumed that defendant would remarry,' Summers wrote in his decision. "Defendant was 30 years old. Plaintiff would not have entered into a stipulation to pay alimony until defendant remarried or died had he realized remarriage was or would become impossible."

"I think the judge is right," said Jean O'Leary at the New York office of the National Gay Task Force, homosexual civil rights organization she serves as executive director.

a

In Elgin, Ill., Richard Templeton, the president of America's Society of Divorced Men, said: “I think that judge had his head on his shoulders."

But a New York lawyer and authority on family law, Doris Jonas Freed, had a different view.

"My opinion is that it is very unfortunate if the judge's opinion should be taken to mean that he gave this cut on moral grounds," said Ms. Freed, secretary of the Family Law Section of the American Bar Association.