Schaffer

My colleagues conclude the trial judge correctly examined Ida’s conduct over the 15 years since the dissolution *813 judgment. They are wrong and, in any event, they mischaracterize the evidence. Moreover, they misconstrue the change of circumstances requirement as applied to a postjudgment proceeding such as we consider.

The Record

The majority, following the trial judge’s lead, paint a picture of a 63-year-old woman who has spent the last 15 years refusing to become self-supporting despite constant judicial warnings. They point to her repeated visits to the courthouse, concluding “enough is enough.”

A review of the record paints a different picture. Ida had already obtained her bachelor’s and master’s degrees in counseling at the time of the dissolution. As we noted in our previous published opinion, the 1980 judgment was premised on a finding “wife suffered from emotional maladies which precluded her from [then] working as a counselor . . . .” (In re Marriage of Schaffer (1984) 158 Cal.App.3d 930, 933 [ 205 Cal.Rptr. 88 ].) However, the judgment was also “based on its presumption that she could be self-supporting as a marriage, family and child counselor.” (Id. at p.…

*803 Opinion

After a 24-year marriage, 1 the trial judge awarded Ida Schaffer spousal support of $850 per month for the first year and $650 per month for the second year, at which time there was to be a “jurisdictional step down” for the balance of Ida’s 2 life. At the time Ida was 48 years old, had a master’s degree in marriage, family and child counseling from Chapman University, and planned to get her Ph.D. in another 2 years. The trial judge, however, was clearly troubled by her choice of occupations. He doubted that she had “the emotional stability and self-control” to do the social and counseling work for which she was training, and suggested she was headed in the “wrong direction.”

That was in 1980. For the next 15 years Ida never sought work outside of social work, and managed to extend her 2 years of support to 15 by a series of 6 postjudgment hearings for modification. In none of those six did she ever receive an order providing for support for a period of more than three years: Each of the different judges she came before obviously hoped she would eventually become self-supporting, albeit each also realized that, given the length of the marriage, the court should…