When One Spouse Uses Community Funds to Care for His Infirm Parent, Is That A Breach Of Fiduciary Duty to His Spouse?

Last week I spoke on filial support duties, and one question from the audience was whether Pennsylvania’s filial support law could obligate someone to provide for a stepparent.  My answer under Pennsylvania law was “probably not.” My analysis was based on Pennsylvania cases, such as Commonwealth v. Goldman, that had used a strict definition of parent-child relationship for purposes of calculating the limits on indigent support obligations, although doing so in the context of in-laws rather than stepparents.

But something in the back of my mind was itching, and of course, over  the weekend I started scratching.  I remembered a case, which did seem to recognize a potential for indirect obligations to “parents-in-law.” 

The case is from California, where divorcing spouses were arguing over division of community property.  One focus of the disputes was proceeds of the sale of a former house.  While rejecting an argument that the sale of the property transmuted the funds into 50/50 separate property, a California appellate court was willing to consider the expenditure by the husband of some of these funds to care for his “infirm mother” to be a “community debt.”  Further, the court observed that unlike the obligation to “reimburse the community” for payment out of community funds to support a child not of that marriage, there was no statutory obligation to “reimburse the community” if the funds were used to care for one spouse’s parent.

Pointing to California’s “not commonly known” filial responsibility law, the court held that if the funds were actually spent for care of his indigent mother, such use did not constitute an “unauthorized gift.”  

The court went further, however, noting that “a spouse’s debt payments may constitute a breach of fiduciary duty and run afoul” of California law dealing with contracts with third parties, when entered into by only one married party. A bit of a Catch-22 problem, right? However, this interesting fiduciary duty issue “was not raised” in the parties’ briefs and therefore was not resolved on this appeal.

On remand, husband was “entitled to establish the funds were expended to support his mother, who was in need and unable to maintain herself.”  For the full analysis, including citations to the relevant California statutes, see In re the Marriage of Leni (2006).