Bank & Trust Co. V. Dooley Case Summary

II. Surveillance expenses are community obligations if they are incurred for the common interest of the spouses.

Whenever surveillance expenses are incurred for home improvement and serve the common interest of the spouses, the court has ruled it as a community obligation. In First Sec. Bank & Trust Co. v. Dooley, 480 So. 2d 842, 844 (La. App. 2d Cir. 1985) the court reasoned that since the wife spent a considerable amount of money on home improvement, the debt was for the common interest of the community. In this case, the defendant borrowed money from a bank. Majority of the loan was spent on home improvements. When the spouses’ filed for divorce, the husband argued that the loan was a separate obligation. However, both parties benefitted from the use of the loan. Whenever private investigator fees

b. The petitioner’s expenses in hiring a private investigator are a separate obligation.

A court will likely find that the petitioner’s expenses in hiring a P.I. to follow the defendant are a separate obligation. Similar to the spouse in Sequeira, the defendant had moved out of the home when the petitioner decided to hire an investigator, thus the incurred costs did not benefit the community because the other spouse no longer lived in the home. The P.I. was hired to surveil the defendant. Again, the cost was selfishly motivated so that the petitioner may know of his whereabouts.

It could be argued that the petitioner hired a P.I. because she was concerned for the defendant’s well-being since they rarely communicated. However, as the court held in Sequeira the petitioner’s testimony failed to show her expenses benefitted the community or her husband. Even more so, the petitioner paid the P.I. with a cashier’s check from a personal account. This implies that she did not intend for the cost to be joint, and she did so to hide the cost from the