Williams v. Williams
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Citation treatment has not been reviewed for this case. The notes below come from the citation graph and the Minnesota Revisor's amendment records, not from a review of how later courts treated this decision.
(as of 9/30/2026)
Last cited by a Minnesota appellate court in 1988, among the opinions in this site’s citation index.
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Cases that cite this one
8 later published cases cite this decision.
- County of Ramsey v. Faulhaber (Minn. Ct. App. 1987)
- Marriage of Tinsley v. Tinsley (Minn. Ct. App. 1988)
- Mark v. Mark (Minn. 1957)
- Industrial Loan Thrift Corporation v. Swanson (Minn. 1947)
- State & Port Authority v. Northern Pacific Railway Co. (Minn. 1946)
- Emanuel v. Emanuel (District Court, Virgin Islands 1978)
- Lammi v. Lammi (Minn. 1955)
- Williams v. Williams (Minn. 1948)
This list shows which later cases cite this one. It does not say how they treated it, and no review of that has been done. Not a substitute for Shepard’s or KeyCite — verify before relying.
Opinion of the Court
This is an appeal from an order releasing defendant from past payments due as support money for a minor child under a former order and decree of divorce.
On September 25, 1937, Olive M. Williams (now Olive M. Good-ing) began an action for divorce on the grounds of desertion. Defendant, Arthur Frederick Williams, was personally served. The case was tried as a default divorce, and a decree of divorce was entered on the same day.
The decree required defendant to pay to plaintiff the sum of five; dollars per week for the support of the minor child of the parties,. *442 Notice of entry of the decree of divorce was never served on defendant. Until March 21, 1915, defendant failed to pay any installments.
On that date, plaintiff brought a separate action against defendant to collect the unpaid installments amounting to $1,800 plus interest. That action is still pending.
In April 1915, defendant served a notice of motion asking for an order modifying the divorce decree and setting aside the unpaid installments. The court ordered the back payments set aside and changed the support money payment from five dollars a week to $20 a month for the future.
Plaintiff appeals .from the order granting the above relief. The issues here are whether defendant had to be served with notice of the decree and, if not, whether the court had the power to set aside accrued payments and decrease the periodic support payments for the future.
A judgment is notice to the parties from the time of its entry. Holmes v. Campbell, 13 Minn. 58 (66). Defendant was personally served with the summons and complaint and was, therefore, within the above rule.
Since action of the lower court cannot, be sustained on the theory of lack of notice, the issue is whether its action constituted an abuse of discretion in cancelling arrearages and lowering periodic payments of support money for the minor child. That precise issue was dealt with by this court in Quist v. Quist, 207 Minn. 257, 290 N. W. 561, and it was there held that, in the absence of evidence showing a change in the defendant’s circumstances whereby he was financially unable to make the payments ordered, the court abused its discretion in cancelling arrearages and lowering the amount of the periodic support money. It is true that in the case at bar defendant has remarried and voluntarily incurred other liabilities. In the Quist case, remarriage and voluntary assumption of other responsibilities were specifically held not to be such a circumstance as to warrant the relief granted. In this case, there is no evidence of a change in defendant’s circumstances , except the remarriage- *443 mentioned above, so the court went beyond judicial discretion ins making the order appealed from.
Order reversed.
Case-law data current through September 30, 2026. Source: CourtListener bulk data.