Dickey v. Dickey’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

6 federal appellate · 148 state decisions

Most-quoted passages

The sentences later courts lift from this opinion, ranked by how many decisions quote each — the parts of the opinion doing the work. These counts are smaller than the citation total above because most of the 154 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. ““Since the case of Wallingsford v. Wallingsford, 6 H. & J. 485 , it has been the settled law of Maryland that permanent alimony is a provision by the husband for the wife’s support that continues only during their joint lives or so long as they live separate and apart. (Citations omitted) It is equally well established in this state that a final decree of divorce a mensa et thoro or a vinculo matrimonii may be modified at any subsequent time as to alimony. (Citations omitted) If, however, the allowance to the wife in the decree is the result of a previous agreement between the spouses and does not fall within the accepted definition of alimony, so that it would have been impossible for the chancellor to have allowed permanent alimony as the decree provides, then, notwithstanding the parties and even the court called it alimony, the allowance for the wife in the decree was not alimony, and a court of equity has no power to modify the decree as in the case of an award of alimony.””

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. 18 Md. App. 626 - Simpson v. Simpson

2. ““ * * * the obligation to pay alimony in a divorce proceeding is not regarded as a debt but a duty growing out of the marital relation and resting upon a sound public policy, and so this obligation may be enforced by attachment of the person for contempt, and the defendant be imprisoned unless he can purge himself of the contempt by paying or by showing that he has neither the estate nor the ability to pay. (citations) “While the fact that the decree in the present case is not for alimony, but only directs the payment of money, prevents the enforcement of the decree by the imprisonment of the defendant for his default, yet the appellant is not without means for compelling the payment of the weekly sum awarded by such further appropriate processes * ( 141 A. at 390 , 58 A.L.R. at 638 )”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. Stone v. Stidham

3. “various [other] remedies at the command of chancery for the purpose of executing or compelling the performance and fulfillment of a decreet,] ... when the decree only directs the payment of money, a party defendant, who has been brought into court under process of contempt to compel the performance of such a decree, may not be imprisoned. [Dickey v. Dickey, supra, 154 Md. at 681 , 141 A. at 390 .]”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. Brown v. Brown