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In the instant case, the second paragraph of article 6 of
the marital settlement states that the liability to make the
annual payments to Ms. Springer will not terminate on either the
death of petitioner or the remarriage of Ms. Springer. Unlike
the situation in Watters v. Foreman, 284 N.W.2d 850 (Neb. 1979),
the parties did not specifically state that the annual payments
would terminate on death or remarriage. Instead, the parties
chose to specifically exclude the death of petitioner or the
remarriage of Ms. Springer as events causing termination. In
Watters v. Foreman, supra, the parties stated one situation in
which the payments would terminate and one situation in which
they would not. The court found that the parties’ statement that
the payments would terminate on the wife’s death effectively
limited the termination events to that specific occurrence and
precluded application of Neb. Rev. Stat. section 42-365 to
statutorily terminate the payments on the wife’s remarriage.
Respondent’s position regarding the application of Watters
in this case would lead to an incongruous result. Here, the
parties did not provide a termination event. Rather, they
specifically excluded from termination two of the three events
previously listed as causing termination in the prior related
paragraph. The specific exclusion of two of the three events
from termination, in this context, without reference to the third
event, indicates that the third terminating event is still
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