NASHUA, N.H. — In a case that originally drew attention because of its use of an ancient law that gives a husband control of his wife’s financial affairs, the state Supreme Court says a Nashua hospital can sell off rental property in Amherst to pay a 2006 medical bill for the divorced husband of a woman who has since died.
The ruling, in Anthony Hayes v. Southern New Hampshire Medical Center, doesn’t touch on the centuries-old “doctrine of necessaries,” designed to make sure men provided food and shelter to their wives in lieu of control of money and property. That doctrine was part of a related case and may come up again.
This ruling concerns Anthony and Karen Hayes, who divorced in January 2007 after 30 years of marriage, seven months before Karen died.
According to court documents, the couple were in litigation with SNHMC over $85,000 in Karen Hayes’ hospital bills. According to earlier court documents, Karen Hayes was admitted to the emergency room four times in late 2006 for complications from alcoholism.
The Hayeses owned a rental house at 101 Merrimack Road in Amherst and a property in Merrimack, on which SNHMC had placed a legal attachment in an attempt to cover the hospital bill.
As part of the divorce, Anthony Hayes got ownership of the two properties. The divorce agreement stipulated that “Karen was responsible for paying the debt to SNHMC as well as any other medical debts or bills,” although she received only “one automobile valued at $1,200 and her bank account with a balance of $0.00,” court documents said.
Southern New Hampshire Medical Center proceeded with its judgment and got a writ of execution to sell the Amherst house. Anthony Hayes got a court to block the sale, but last week, the Supreme Court overturned that decision, allowing the hospital to go forward.
Robert Shepard, of the law firm Smith-Weiss Shepard, said the court ruled that because Karen Hayes had executed what is known as a “quit-claim deed,” the hospital’s attachment carried over with the properties when they were given to her husband.
If she had not done that, Shepard said, “the attachment would be extinguished” after the divorce and her death, and Arthur Hayes wouldn’t be responsible for the medical bill.
Shepard said he expected that the hospital would proceed with the sale of the Amherst home.
If that pays off the debt, he said, a parallel case against Arthur Hayes may not go forward.
Earlier rulings on that case raised complex legal questions about exactly what constitutes a marriage, the extent to which married couples are responsible for one another’s debts and whether laws that were created when society defined women as the property of their husbands should be applied in modern cases.
When the Supreme Court considered the issue in 2010, it found Arthur Hayes liable for the debts under the “doctrine of necessaries,” which the court conceded originated from the “draconian legal restrictions on the rights of married women” and might not be consistent with the modern idea of marriage.
Some states have abolished the doctrine, which was designed to provide women basic protection after divorce in an age when they had few legal rights, but in a 1995 Supreme Court decision, New Hampshire expanded it to apply to men and women equally.
In the 2010 decision, one Supreme Court justice issued a separate opinion: Justice Gary Hicks suggested that someone should bring a case before the court raising the possibility of abolishing the doctrine entirely.
Shepard said this might be a basis for Anthony Hayes in his case, although the Amherst sale might cover the debt and make any future legal action unnecessary.
David Brooks can be reached at 594-6531 or dbrooks@nashuatelegraph.com.