Waite v. Waite

In Waite v. Waite (1972) 6 Cal.3d 461, the decision bearing directly on the instant case, the trial court, upon the divorce of a judge and his wife, ordered the Controller to pay directly to Mrs. Waite "or her devisee or heirs" one-half of all benefits payable to her husband under the Judge's Retirement Act. This order followed as a matter of course the usual community property rule, embodied in Probate Code section 201: "Upon the death of either husband or wife, one-half of the community property belongs to the surviving spouse; the other half is subject to the testamentary disposition of the decedent, and in the absence thereof goes to the surviving spouse, subject to the provisions of sections 202 and 203 of this code." However, the Supreme Court sustained Judge Waite's objection to that part of the order regarding payment to Mrs. Waite's heirs. The court held that the state's concern lay in providing subsistence only for the judge and his dependents and not the objects of the nonemployee spouse's bounty. ( Id. at p. 473.) Despite some ambiguity in the opinion (compare fns. 8 and 9) Waite has consistently been interpreted as having limited Mrs. Waite's community property interest in the pension to an interest that survived only as long as she did.