In Emanuel v. Emanuel (1975) 50 Cal.App.3d 56, the wife received a property settlement which included the following provision: "'husband promises and agrees to pay to wife for her support and maintenance and as alimony, the sum of Four Hundred ($400.00) Dollars per month, commencing on the fifteenth day of October, 1957, and continuing thereafter on the fifteenth day of each succeeding month until the death or remarriage of wife.'" (Emanuel, supra, 50 Cal.App.3d at p. 57.) The settlement agreement also provided, "'all of the covenants, provisions, conditions, and agreements in this instrument contained shall apply to and be binding and obligatory upon, and shall inure to the benefit of not only the parties hereto but also their respective heirs, executors, administrators, and assigns.'" (Id. at p. 58.) The husband died in 1974 and the wife filed a claim against his estate for $69,000, an estimate of what she would have received given her life expectancy. When the claim was rejected, she commenced an action to enforce it. (Emanuel, supra, 50 Cal.App.3d at p. 58.) The trial court sustained the executors' demurrer on the complaint. (Id. at p. 59.) Relying on Civil Code section 139, the appellate court held that, in the absence of express language which demonstrated the parties intended for the promise to survive the husband's death, the strong legislative policy of terminating spousal support payments on the death of the obligor prevailed. It refused to allow the wife to offer extrinsic evidence of the intent of the parties, noting that "liberality in permitting an ex-spouse, after the death of the other, to offer evidence that the parties intended a support obligation to survive the death of the obligor has great potential for mischief." (Emanuel, at p. 60.) "If the parties truly intended the result for which wife contends it would have been a simple matter to spell it out in the agreement and to have such provision incorporated in the decree instead of sowing the seeds of future litigation in the soil of vague 'boiler-plate' language untended by the parties and hidden from the judge." (Ibid.)