Beard v. Beard’s Empirical Analysis
1962
Citation profile
3 federal appellate · 1 district · 20 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 25 later decisions — most recently March 2018 · most notably Mentock v. Mentock (1981), Combs v. Sherry-Combs (1993)
3 federal appellate · 1 district · 20 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 Rhinehart v. Rhinehart
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 25 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“"* * * Whether or not to modify the decree was in the sound discretion of the court. 49 C.J.S. Judgments § 300. Agreements such as were entered into by defendant and plaintiff are favored by the courts. That matter was fully discussed in Rinehart v. Rinehart, 52 Wyo. 363 , 75 P.2d 390 . Hence it would seem that if the agreement were entered into voluntarily and by competent persons and if the contract were not against public policy or against the best interest of the children, the only proper course for the court was to enforce it, or, rather, not to interfere with it. We have not been cited to any authority that the contract was against public policy. Nor has it been shown that the contract is prejudicial to the interest of the children." Id. at 955.”
2 later decisions 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.