Beahm v. Beahm

47 Misc. 2d 900, 263 N.Y.S.2d 533, 1965 N.Y. Misc. LEXIS 1474
CourtNew York City Family Court
DecidedSeptember 30, 1965
StatusPublished
Cited by8 cases

This text of 47 Misc. 2d 900 (Beahm v. Beahm) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering New York City Family Court primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Beahm v. Beahm, 47 Misc. 2d 900, 263 N.Y.S.2d 533, 1965 N.Y. Misc. LEXIS 1474 (N.Y. Super. Ct. 1965).

Opinion

Millard L. Midonick, J.

The problem of each of these cases is typical of a welter of others daily being heard and heard again in the Family Court of the State of New York. Involved [901]*901is the resolution of conflicting orders of two different courts directed to the employer of the respondent husband and father. One order is a payroll deduction order made by this court of record (or by the Supreme Court) for support of wife and/or children, under the authority of section 49-b of the Personal Property Law; the other is an income execution under CPLR 5231 (subd. [e]), known as a garnishment under the predecessor section 684 of the Civil Practice Act and still one of the many garnishments under CPLR 105 (subd. [h]) as explained by commentary under CPLR 5201 in McKinney’s Consolidated Laws of New York (Book 7B, CPLR, p. 25) directed to the same employer by a judgment creditor with a commercial or tort claim against the same husband and father, as an employee.

Simultaneously in 1961, two courts in this State took opposite views of the meaning of section 49-b of the Personal Property Law in respect to whether the payroll deduction order for the support of the family shall be exclusive, or whether instead the employer shall be required to deduct concurrently both the support payroll deduction ordered by this court (or by the Supreme Court in a matrimonial proceeding), and the 10% of wages in satisfaction of the garnishment.

In Loan Serv. Corp. v. Bridgeport Lbr. Co. (27 Misc 2d 938 [Supreme Ct. Onondaga County, April 25, 1961], affd. unanimously without opn. 14 A D 2d 827 [4th Dept., Oct. 19, 1961]), the prior payroll deduction order for $35 a week under section 49-b of the Personal Property Law for the support of the employee’s minor children, was held not to preclude a 10% deduction of wages in addition, to satisfy a wage assignment given to a lending company simultaneously with the employee’s borrowing $500. The Supreme Court reasoned that granting exclusive effect to a family support payroll deduction order under the “priority” provision of section 49-b of the Personal Property Law would render the employee’s wages immune from the garnishments of judgment creditors for possibly years or at least an undetermined period while the family support payroll deduction order continued in effect. The court asserted that “Such a situation also very possibly could result in collusion between spouses ” (27 Misc 2d 938, 939).

The Appellate Term, Second Department, came to a different conclusion in Feder v. Skyway Container Corp. (218 N. Y. S. 2d 362 [June 19, 1961]). There it held that the prior payroll deduction order for a wife and children of an employee made under section 49-b of the Personal Property Law prevented [902]*902the concurrent effectuation of a later garnishment by a judgment creditor of the same employee under section 684 of the Civil Practice Act (now CPLR 5231, subd. [e]). The Appellate Term reasoned on the basis of the history of the" legislation and its express provision that such a payroll deduction order for support of the employee’s minor children or spouses “ takes priority over any other assignment or garnishment of wages, salary and/or commissions * * * but does not invalidate any existing valid wage or salary assignment in effect at the time this act takes effect.” (Personal Property Law, § 49-b, as added by L. 1958, ch. 659, eff. April 12,1958.)

The recorded legislative history on section 49-b of the Personal Property Law, although not specific on the conflict with garnishments, indicates the importance of the purpose behind the 1958 law. The statement of Hon. Victor B. Wylegala, Judge of Erie County Children’s Court, indicates that section 49-b was to serve two purposes: ‘ ‘ first, it would insure regularity of payments, thereby reducing welfare expenditures which otherwise subsidize such families; and, second, this plan will reduce to a great degree the caseload of our probation departments because at present such cases make up their largest caseload.” (Memorandum of Committee on Legislation of New York State Association of Children’s Court Judges, N. Y. State Legis. Annual, 1958, p. 6.)

It would seem that the Appellate Term, Second Department, is correct in holding that the word ‘ ‘ priority ’ ’ and the word “ invalidate ” must mean that a payroll deduction order for the support of the dependents is (at least prima facie) exclusive, despite subsequent assignments or garnishments. Indeed, I was persuaded in this case to go further than the Appellate Term, and instructed the employer of the respondent father in the Beahm case herein to suspend even the prior garnishment while this payroll deduction order for support of wife and children remains in effect, thereby giving the support deduction the statutory “priority”. Thus the garnishment in the Beahm case, faced with a later family support involuntary payroll deduction order, is dropped a notch in the ladder of priority as though another wage garnishment liad the status of priority in time. This holding is in accord with the dictum of the Appellate Term in that the family support payroll deduction order “is always entitled to priority”. (Feder v. Skyway Container Corp., 218 N. Y. S. 2d 362, 364, supra.)

Since the statute grants priority to payroll deduction orders for family support without any time limitation, and speaks [903]*903of not invalidating only assignments in effect at the time the act took effect, it would seem that the Legislature intended that even a later support payroll deduction order prima facie supersedes or temporarily suspends a prior garnishment. Such an interpretation would, of course, not bar a court of competent jurisdiction from making an affirmative ruling, under statutory authority, to reinstate and enforce the garnishment through concurrent deductions. Had the Legislature intended concurrent deductions to be the prima facie consequence of such two deductions, in the absence of such an affirmative action, such words as “notwithstanding a garnishment” would have expressed such a concept in section 49-b of the Personal Property Law rather than the words used: “takes priority over any other * * * garnishment.”

The sole contrary argument which provides the only other possible meaning for the word “priority” consistent with two concurrent deductions as a matter of course, leads to an unreasonable result which cannot have been the intention of the Legislature. Thus, if “ priority ” were to mean effectively only that more than 90% of the respondent’s wages must be deducted for support of his dependents, before the remaining 10% wage garnishment were to be curtailed, then one envisages the entire deprivation from such a man of all of his earnings. Such an inhumane and unworkable result seems outside the pale of legislative intention. We are compelled therefore to fall back upon the meaning of “priority” as first in time, thereby excluding wage garnishments and assignments during the enforcement of the favored support deduction, unless and until an affirmative judicial order establishes the propriety of two concurrent deductions. This is the same exclusivity given any wage garnishment having priority in time, only one being permitted to operate contemporaneously.

The tendency to avoid harsh income executions is illustrated in the 1964 ruling of the County Court of Westchester, where the new provisions of CPLR 5240 and CPLR 5231 (subd.

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Bluebook (online)
47 Misc. 2d 900, 263 N.Y.S.2d 533, 1965 N.Y. Misc. LEXIS 1474, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/beahm-v-beahm-nycfamct-1965.