Pope v. Pope

Digges, J., delivered the opinion of the Court. This case requires us to determine whether a court, pursuant to a statutory grant of authority to establish a lien on the earnings of a person in arrears on court-ordered support payments, may place a lien on that person’s unemployment benefits — or whether, to the contrary, such a lien to satisfy a support order is prohibited by the section of the Maryland Unemployment Insurance Law which invalidates encumbrances of the right to benefits. Our perusal of the pertinent statutes and case law persuades us that the imposition of this type of lien is permissible. We need not linger long on the particular facts of this case, since the issue we decide is a straightforward one of statutory construction and in no way dependent on the vagaries of the circumstances here.

Briefly, appellant Ella Elizabeth Pope, former wife of appellee William Joseph Pope, Sr., sought to enforce the provisions of a decree under which Mr. Pope was to pay her permanent alimony of $20.00 per week. The Circuit Court of Baltimore City, Dorf, J., finding a sufficient ⁵³³ arrearage in the payments and acting pursuant to statutory provisions for the enforcement of spousal support, see Md. Code (1957,1973 Repl. Yol., 1977 Cum. Supp.), Art. 16, § 5B, ordered a lien to the extent of $20.00 per week against the unemployment benefits due or to become due to Mr. Pope from the Employment Security Administration.

The latter agency, an appellee here, subsequently moved to vacate that order, arguing that unemployment insurance benefits are not earnings within the meaning of the spousal support statute and, in addition, that a lien on those benefits contravenes section 16 (c) of the Unemployment Insurance Law. Md. Code (1957, 1969 Repl. Vol), Art. 95A, § 16(c). The chancellor agreed and vacated the order, an action which precipitated this appeal. 1 We granted certiorari prior to consideration of the matter by the Court of Special Appeals, and now reverse the final action of the chancellor and direct that the order imposing the lien be reinstated.

We may quickly dispose of the contention by the Employment Security Administration — ESA — that unemployment insurance benefits are not earnings within the meaning of section 5B of Article 16, which permits the court to order a lien on the earnings of a person defaulting on a court order to pay support. 2 Section 5B(a)(2) defines “earnings” as encompassing “any form of periodic payment to an individual, including annuity, pension, social security, and workmen’s compensation payments.” (Emphasis supplied.) 3 Although it is incontrovertible that un ⁵³⁴ employment benefits are a form of periodic payment to an individual, thus bringing them within the plain meaning of the statutory definition, ESA contends that since this particular form of periodic payment is not specifically listed along with the other forms enumerated after the word “including,” the statute should not be extended by judicial interpretation to include unemployment benefits. In response to this suggestion, we merely observe that neither is it appropriate to restrict a remedial statute by judicial interpretation, especially when that would require us to hold, without support from either statute or case law, that a particular form of periodic payment to an individual is not in fact a form of periodic payment to an individual. 4 We come now to the substance of ESA’s objection to the imposition of a lien for alimony payments on unemployment benefits: that the first clause of section 16(c) of the Unemployment Insurance Law absolutely prohibits all encumbrances on the right to benefits, including a lien for support payments otherwise authorized by Article 16, section 5B. Section 16 (c) reads: (c) No assignment of benefits; exemptions. — No assignment, pledge, or encumbrances of any right to benefits which are or may become due or payable under this article shall be valid; and such rights to benefits shall be exempt from levy, execution, attachment, or any other remedy whatsoever provided for the collection of debt; and benefits received by any individual, so long as they are not mingled with other funds of the recipient, shall be exempted from any remedy whatsoever for the collection of all debts. No waiver of any exemption provided for in this subsection shall be valid. [Md. Code (1957, 1969 Repl.

Yol.), Art, 95A, § 16 (c).] ⁵³⁵ We have concluded that section 16(c), while invalidating “encumbrances of any right to benefits,” does not prohibit a lien for alimony and that there is, therefore, no conflict between the unemployment insurance statute and the spousal support law. The first, and perhaps the more potent of the principles forming the basis of our conclusion, is one that this Court applied only last term in United States v. Williams, 279 Md. 673 , 370 A. 2d 1134 (1977); that statutes and constitutional provisions exempting specific property from legal process are usually construed, absent a specific statutory provision to the contrary, to be inapplicable as against a claim for alimony or support. Indeed, the principle applied in Williams makes that case virtually dispositive of the present one. In Williams the wife had obtained a monetary judgment for arrearages in alimony and filed a writ of attachment with the United States in order to effect collection from the husband’s military retirement pay.

Id. at 675-76 [1136]. In response to questions certified to this Court from the United States District Court for the District of Maryland, we determined that the husband’s retirement pay constituted wages within the meaning of State law governing attachment of wages, see Md. Code (1975), §§ 15-601 to -603 of the Commercial Law Article, but that the exemption of certain amounts of the wages from attachment, as provided by section 15-602 (b) of the statute, did not apply since the attachment was to effect the collection of alimony. 279 Md. at 678-79 , 370 A. 2d at 1137 . Section 15-602 (b) is absolute on its face, providing that: The following amounts of wages shall be exempt from attachment: (1) Except as provided in paragraph (2) of this subsection [providing different amounts in certain counties], the greater of: (i) The product of $120 multiplied by the number of weeks in which the wages due were earned, or (ii) 75 percent of the wages due . . . [(Emphasis added.)] ⁵³⁶ Despite this seemingly unambiguous language and the lack of any expressed statutory exception to the quoted provision, we concluded that section 15-602 (b) did not apply, and thus that no part of the wages was exempt from attachment for past-due alimony, “because the underlying obligation is for intra-familial support and the very purpose of the statutory exemptions is to protect a family from being deprived of all support by attachment proceedings brought by an outsider.” United States v. Williams, supra at 678 [1137]; cf. Safe Deposit & Tr. Co. v. Robertson, 192 Md. 653, 663 , 65 A. 2d 292, 296 (1949) (refusing to allow the rule giving legal effect to spendthrift provisions of a trust as against contract creditors to be extended to claims for support or alimony, since in such a situation a wife’s claim “is based upon the strongest grounds of public policy”).

The rationale given in Williams for failing to adhere to the literal language of the statute is equally applicable in the case now before us, for the very purpose of invalidating assignments of unemployment benefits and of exempting them from attachment, as of the entire Unemployment Insurance Law, is “to lighten [the] burden which now so often falls with crushing force upon the unemployed worker and his family.” Code, Art. 95A, § 2 (emphasis added). 5 There is nothing unique in the principle which we applied in Williams in interpreting the exemption statute before the Court there and which we reiterate today. See, e.g., Schlaefer v. Schlaefer, 112 F. 2d 177, 184-88 (D.C. Cir. 1940) (statute exempting disability insurance benefits from attachment or other process to pay any “debt or liability” not applicable to claim for alimony or support; court notes that general exemption statutes containing no explicit exceptions have been held not applicable to such claims) (citing cases); Mahone v. Mahone, 213 Kan. 346 , 517 P. 2d 131, 133-34 (1973) (statutory exemption of pension funds from “execution, garnishment, or attachment, or any other process or claim whatsoever” not applicable when in conflict with enforcement of a decree or claim for child support); Fischer v. Fischer, 13 ⁵³⁷ N. J. 162, 98 A. 2d 568, 569-70 (1953) (statute exempting pensions from “execution, garnishment, attachment, sequestration or other legal process” does not immunize pension from judicial process to enforce alimony decree); Brown