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Ruggles v. Ruggles8/16/1993
tute an abuse of the trial court's discretion. With appropriate findings, the trial court may, as we have discussed, utilize other methods, in combination with or apart from the lump sum method.
Finally, we wish to comment on the Court of Appeals' statement in Ruggles that "the trial court had discretion to modify the terms of the agreement to assure fairness." . The Court cited , and ), as support for this statement. Neither case supports the proposition that a court dividing community property in a dissolution proceeding has authority to modify the parties' agreed-upon division to assure "fairness." Brister involved modification of an award of alimony, as expressly permitted by statute. (relying on NMSA 1978, § 40-4-7(B)(2)). Wolcott perhaps does provide inferential support for the proposition, but any such support is weak because the case involved unique facts (a prior court decree that the husband apparently sought to evade by entering into a subsequent separation agreement) and cited no authority itself except , which, like Brister, involved modification of an alimony or support agreement. Id. at 46, 54, 287 P.2d at 240, 246.
While this issue is not directly before us in this certiorari proceeding, we cannot let pass a remark that we believe is of questionable validity. Even Joseph Ruggles, the prevailing party in the Court of Appeals, asks us to disapprove the Court's dictum. We are inclined to agree with Joseph that a voluntary property settlement between divorcing spouses, dividing their community property as they see fit, is sacrosanct and cannot be upset by the court granting the divorce , absent fraud, duress, mistake, breach of fiduciary duty, or other similar equitable ground for invalidating an agreement. See, e.g., Miller v. Miller, 33 N.M. 132, 134, 262 P. 1007, 1007-08 (1928) (trial court that approved divorcing spouses' property settlement agreement could hardly have ruled otherwise "in the face of the voluntary property settlement made by the parties themselves . . . which was not attacked for fraud, duress, or mistake."). See also NMSA 1978, § 40-2-2 (Repl.Pamp.1989) (Either spouse may enter into any transaction with the other which either might if unmarried, "subject, in transactions between themselves, to the general rules of common law which control the actions of persons occupying confidential relations with each other.").
V. DISPOSITION
The decisions of the Court of Appeals in these cases are reversed, and each case is remanded to the district court where it arose for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.
IT IS SO ORDERED.
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