Edsall v. Edsall’s Empirical Analysis
1951
Citation profile
17 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 18 later decisions — most recently August 1990
17 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 Dakan v. Dakan · Colden v. Alexander · Smith v. Buss · Clift v. Clift · Hardee, Sheriff v. Vincent
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 18 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
““We first consider qtiestiori No. 4. The decisions of varioús' co’urts of civil appeals'with respect to'this question cannot well be harmonized. As we view the problem, it is not a correct approach to its solution to classify the wife’s attorney’s fees as a necessity, and then apply the rule that necessities are primarily the obligations of the community and secondarily of the husband’s separate estate. That reasoning fails to take into account Article 4638, supra, which provides: ‘The court pronouncing a decree of divorce shall also decree and order a division of the estate of the parties in such a way as the court shall deem just and right, having due regard to the rights of each party and their children, if any. Nothing herein shall be construed to compel either party to divest himself or herself of the title to real estate.’ “That statute clearly vests discretion in the trial court in determining the proper division of the community estate of the parties. The court is not required, as a matter of law, to divide that estate equally between them. In practical effect, a decree that the husband pay all of the wife’s attorney’s fees may be to award him less of the community estate than that awarded to the wife, but that alone does not condemn it. The attorney’s fee is but a factor to be considered by the court in making an equitable division of the estate, considering' the conditions' and needs of the parties and all of the surrounding circumstances.””
1 later decision quote this exact passage
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.