Hellman v. Hellman’s Empirical Analysis
1957
Citation profile
24 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 24 later decisions — most recently August 1989
24 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 Baskerville v. Baskerville · Warner v. Warner · Mark v. Mark · Hafner v. Hafner · Elsen v. State Farmers Mutual Insurance Co.
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 24 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“Although the fact that the court in its final decree adopted the [maintenance] provisions of a stipulation entered into by the parties pending the action is entitled to considerable evidentiary weight in passing upon an application for [maintenance] revision, the stipulation is, nevertheless, purely advisory to the court and does not limit or deprive it of its discretionary power of determining whether a future change of circumstances warrants revision. A court-adopted stipulation is to be given such evidentiary weight as will make the court more reluctant, than it would otherwise be, to modify the original [maintenance] provisions. Stipulations of this kind are deemed to have been entered into in view of the authority conferred upon the court by the statute and are merged in the judgment, and are not so far contracts as to be controlling upon the court or as to preclude subsequent change, in a proper case, of the original final decree. It follows that the parties cannot by their stipulation bind the court as to what change of circumstance shall or shall not justify a change in [maintenance].”
1 later decision quote this exact passage“purely advisory to the court and do not limit its discretionary power to determine whether a future change of circumstances warrants revision, but they are entitled to considerable evidentiary weight which will make the court more reluctant to modify the original decree than it would otherwise be, particularly where the parties have had the benefit of able counsel in so stipulating.”
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.