61 Wash. 2d 176 - Rustad v. Rustad’s Empirical Analysis
1963
Citation profile
29 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 37 later decisions — most recently October 2010 · most notably 103 Wash. 2d 807 - In Re the Marriage of Landry (1985), Seizer v. Sessions (1997)
29 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 In Re the Estate of Gulstine · Brookman v. Durkee · Jones v. Duke
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 37 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“The appellants cite such cases as MacKenzie v. Sellner, 58 Wn. (2d) 101, 361 P. (2d) 165 ; In re Armstrong’s Estate, 33 Wn. (2d) 118, 204 P. (2d) 500 ; and Togliatti v. Robertson, 29 Wn. (2d) 844, 190 P. (2d) 575 , in all of which we held that the community property laws will not be applied to a defunct marriage. In each of those cases, there was some action on the part of the spouses which indicated that they had renounced the marriage relationship. Here, the wife was merely confined to a hospital because of mental illness. It is true that she was confined for life, and it may also be true that her husband could have obtained a divorce because of her insanity. But he did not choose to do so; and the record is devoid of any evidence that he ever renounced or denied the marriage relationship. On the contrary, according to the record, he served as guardian of her estate after 1950, and his will, executed in his later years, made provision for her as his wife. The rule set forth in the cited cases is therefore not applicable here.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage“"When a husband and wife are living separate and apart, their respective earnings and accumulations shall be the separate property of each. The earnings and accumulations of minor children shall be the separate property of the spouse who has their custody or, if no custody award has been made, then the separate property of the spouse with whom said children are living."”
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.