Elmore v. Elmore

Plaintiff wife appeals from the family court’s refusal to award her $9,000 pursuant to a stipulated settlement provision embodied in a court order requiring defendant husband to pay a $3,000 penalty fee each time biannual maintenance payments were not made by a date certain. We are called upon to decide the enforceability of a stipulated provision in a divorce judgment imposing a penalty for untimely compliance ■with court ordered payments. We reverse, in part.

The wife filed a complaint for divorce in September 1987. On February 1,1988, the court issued a temporary order requiring the husband…