Phillips v. Phillips’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

1 federal appellate · 17 state decisions

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 19 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. ““The petitioner further objects to the decree appealed frofti on the ground that the trust agreement, on the provisions of which said decree is based, is not valid and enforceable. In support of this attack the petitioner has cited to us a number of eases from other jurisdictions, in which certain agreements between parties to divorce proceedings, with reference to the amount of the wife’s alimony, have been considered. In some of the older of these eases such agreements have been disregarded, apparently because of the incapacity of the wife to contract with her husband until the bond of marriage had been dissolved. In a few others such agreements have been held to 'open a door for the attainment of divorce by collusion,’ and hence to be against public policy and void. In most of the eases cited, while the courts recognized the competency of the parties to make such a contract, the particular agreement under consideration has been treated as a nullity, because the provisions contained therein were unjust to the wife, or because in the circumstances of the particular case the court found such agreement to be part of a collusive scheme to impose upon the court in which the divorce proceeding was pending. “The broad terms of our statute with reference to the contracts which a married woman may make permit the petitioner to enter into this contract with her husband, and in our opinion agreements of this character are not in their nature void as being contrary to public policy.””

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. Frothingham v. Anthony