Willis v. Willis’s Empirical Analysis
1978
Citation profile
14 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 14 later decisions — most recently January 2011
14 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 283 So. 2d 226 - Bernhardt v. Bernhardt
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 14 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“"When estranged spouses agree to an alimony figure without judicial intervention, this agreement should be regarded as a trial setting, entitled to extremely great weight if later questioned, but not entitled to the absolute status of a judicial admission (which is not usually the intention of the parties).1 Under the Bernhardt case an oversolicitous (or underrepresented) spouse who later determines that he or she was too generous in the agreement, has no practical recourse for a substantial period of time. The net result is to discourage alimony settings by consent and to promote distasteful litigation (and in cases of alimony pendente lite such unnecessary litigation often forecloses any chance of reconciliation). The preferable procedure, in my opinion, is to allow the trial judge (who exercises vast discretion in this area) the discretion to reconsider alimony awards previously set by consent, if the motion makes out a case for reconsideration. Allowing sparing use of discretion will not open flood gates of litigation, while easing the inflexible rule absolutely prohibiting reconsideration will prevent injustice such as occurred in the present case." (footnote omitted) We agree with Justice Lemmon that a strong argument can be made for a less rigid application of the "change of circumstances" rule in instances where an alimony or child support award has been fixed via a consent judgment and it is evident that there has been overreaching by one of the parties to the consen”
2 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the concurrence
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.