Passolt v. Passolt

In my last posting, I commented on a Family-In-Law article about upcoming Minnesota Supreme Court cases that may affect spousal support, aka alimony. The article made a passing mention to the 2011 Court of Appeals case of Passolt v. Passolt, in which television anchor Jeff Passolt successfully argued that his ex-wife Lisa was willfully underemployed. The court agreed.

"The district court erred by concluding that, in granting maintenance, it was not permitted to consider wife's prospective ability to become partially or fully self-supporting"

 No. A10-1151.
Court of Appeals of Minnesota.

The Passolts divorced after a 30 year marriage. Mine was 18. Lisa Passolt had a worked part-time as a fitness instructor and was only making about $3000 per year at the time of the divorce. In my case, prior to planning the divorce, Spring was making much more than that, had a good education, strong business management experience, and a vocational evaluator found she could make just as much money as me. Lisa Passolt was the primary parent during the marriage. The custody evaluaor ruled in my case that parenting was joint.

Justice is arbitrary in Minnesota. Judges can simply rule however they want without restriction. They may rule based on clearly illegal criteria including gender, race, ethnicity, or how well they know one of the lawyers. As long as they do not state they are ruling based on illegal criteria they can get away with it. This inevitably leads to corruption.

Jeff Passolt was only successful because the judge in the original case stated that Lisa Passolt was likely to become self-supporting within a year. If this had not been written there would have been no basis for an appeal. This is how utterly ridiculous the system is.

Our funding fathers devised a constitution based on a balance of power between the legislative, executive and judicial. It is a check and balance system. It is high time for the Minnesota legislature to check the judicial.