Samiec v. Hopkins

Mother and Father were divorced in 2009 pursuant to a divorce decree that required Father to pay seventy-five percent of the parties’ children’s medical expenses not covered by insurance. At issue in this dispute was whether the costs of one of the parties’ daughter’s placement at a residential program should be treated as a counseling cost, which pursuant to the divorce agreement would be subject to a fifty-fifty split between the parties, or as a medical expense. The district court ruled that residential treatment is a medical expense and ordered Father to reimburse Mother the amount she paid to the residential program in excess of the seventy-five/twenty-five split dictated by the parties’ divorce agreement. The Supreme Court affirmed, holding that the district court did not err in (1) failing to recognize either a written or an implied agreement between Father and Mother to split the residential treatment costs equally; and (2) failing to apply the doctrine of promissory estoppel to find a binding agreement between the parties to share equally in the costs of their daughter’s residential treatment. View "Samiec v. Hopkins" on Justia Law