Lucy v. Lucy’s Empirical Analysis
1981
Citation profile
88 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 90 later decisions — most recently May 2025 · most notably Yontef v. Yontef (1981), Unkelbach v. McNary (1998)
88 state decisions
Later decisions citing this case, by decade. The current decade is in progress, and our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so the latest bars are undercounted — not a real decline.
Relationships
Relies on Miller v. Miller · Jacobsen v. Jacobsen · Schmidt v. Schmidt · Fucci v. Fucci · Casanova v. Casanova
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 90 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“[e]arning capacity . . . is not an amount which a person can theoretically earn, nor is it confined to actual income, but rather it is an amount which a person can realistically be expected to earn considering such things as his vocational skills, employability, age and health.”
6 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“It is well established that the trial court may under appropriate circumstances in a marital dissolution proceeding base financial awards on the earning capacity of the parties rather than on actual earned income.”
2 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“can afford to pay . . . is a material consideration in the court's determination as to what is a proper order.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
How this case has been treated — in progress
Whether each later court followed, distinguished, criticized, or overruled this decision. The treatment classification (task #35) runs highest-cited cases first and lights up here as it reaches this one.