Williams v. Williams

In Williams v. Williams (1970) 8 Cal.App.3d 636, the court ordered the husband to pay both alimony and child support to wife. After support had been ordered, the husband and wife agreed that the husband would manage a jointly owned apartment house. In managing the apartment house, the husband incurred a loss, so he deducted the wife's proportional share of the loss from her support payments. (Williams, supra, 8 Cal.App.3d at pp. 638-639.) \ The Court of Appeal held that the husband could not use the business loss (which resulted in a debt owed by the wife to the husband) to offset his support obligations. The court wrote: "The rationale behind such rule is that alimony is not an ordinary debt but a marital duty of the husband to support his wife. To allow such a setoff would amount to a retroactive alteration of alimony payments or debts . . . ." (Id. at p. 639.) The court applied the same rule to child support because it "is not an 'ordinary debt' but rather a court-imposed obligation to provided for one's child." (Ibid.)