# Mears v. Mears

> Supreme Court of Iowa · December 19, 1973 · 213 N.W.2d 511

URL: https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/9579206

## Case

- **Full name:** Carla MEARS, Appellant, v. Robert C. MEARS, Appellee
- **Court:** Supreme Court of Iowa
- **Decided:** December 19, 1973
- **Citations:** 213 N.W.2d 511; 1973 Iowa Sup. LEXIS 1186
- **Precedential status:** Published
- **Opinion:** Concurrence by Moore
- **Judges:** Mason, Rawlings, Legrand, Rees, Harris, McCormick, Moore, Reynoldson, Uhlenhopp
- **Cited by:** 69 later opinions in the Frix Law Library

## Citator (automated)

- No negative treatment found by the automated citator. That is not the same as a confirmation that the case is good law; read the citing cases.
- Full citator and citing cases: https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/9579206

## How later opinions describe it (automated extraction)

- stating that when modifying child custody, a court looks at evidence of a substantial change in circumstances since the time of the last modification order
- holding remarriage of ex-spouse and loss of income not to be a substantial change in circumstances
- declining to modify when prior court “took into consideration that the boys would grow older”

## Opinion text

MOORE, Chief Justice
(concurring specially).
I concur in the result based on divisions V and VI of the opinion.
I believe the dictum: “[I]f the parties knew of some fact at time of original decree or at a subsequent intervening proceeding which considered modification of child support provisions of such decree but the decretal court did not know of such fact, and this fact is being now advanced as a basis for modification, then that fact, if sufficient to cause a subsequent material change in circumstances, would be grounds for a modification,” indicates a right to litigate facts known to one or both parties at a prior hearing. Such a right does not exist.
“ * * *. It has always been held that the original decree is conclusive upon the parties as to the then circumstances of the parties, and the power to grant a modification in the decree is not a power to grant a new trial, or to retry the same issues, but only to adapt the decree to the changed conditions of the parties.” Newburn v. Newburn, 210 Iowa 639, 641 , 231 N.W. 389, 390 , 391 and citations.
UHLENHOPP and REYNOLDSON, JJ., join in this special concurrence.

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Source: Frix Law Library, https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/9579206. Public record. Not legal advice.