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250 Ga. 449

298 S.E.2d 495

Beard v. Beard

Supreme Court of Georgia

Decided January 4, 1983

Supreme Court of Georgia · decided 1983-01-04

Key passage — most relied on by later courts

“any and all rights that they may have under [OCGA § 19-6-19] to seek a revision of the Judicial Decree with respect to permanent alimony for Wife”

quoted by 1 later decision, including Nelson v. Mixon

Relies on Varn v. Varn

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1983-01-04

How this case has been cited

Cited by 7 later decisions — most recently July 2006

5 state decisions

30198319902000decided

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.

View the full empirical analysis of this case →

Per curiam.

¶1 We granted applications for discretionary appeal in order to determine whether the trial court was correct in its ruling that the express provisions of a settlement agreement between the parties constitute a waiver by the husband of a right to seek a downward modification of his child support obligation, under the test set out in Varn v. Varn, 242 Ga. 309, 311 (248 SE2d 667) (1978).

¶2 The agreement provides that the parties “expressly waive any and all rights that they may have under Georgia Code Annotated Section 30-220 (a) to seek a revision of the Judicial Decree with respect to permanent alimony for Wife.”

¶3Varn holds as follows: “We therefore adopt the rule that parties to an alimony agreement may obtain modification unless the agreement expressly waives the right of modification by referring specifically to that right; the right to modification will be waived by agreement of the parties only in very clear waiver language which refers to the right of modification.” Id., at 311.

¶4 Plainly, the agreement constitutes a waiver by both parties of *450 the right to seek modification with respect to permanent alimony for the wife. Nowhere therein, however, is any provision “in very clear waiver language which refers to the right of modification” of child support payments.

Decided January 4, 1983. Barwick, Bentley, Karesh & Seacrest, Sanford R. Karesh, Thomas S. Bentley, Edwin A. Tate, for appellant. William H. Major, for appellee.

¶5 Accordingly, the interpretation of the trial court finding a waiver was not warranted by the terms of the agreement.

¶6 Judgments in Cases Nos. 39234 and 39235 affirmed in part; reversed in part.

All the Justices concur, except Weltner, J., disqualified.
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