Robert Leeson Wilson v. Janet Marie Cosgrove

COURT OF APPEALS
DECISION NOTICE
DATED AND FILED This opinion is subject to further editing. If
published, the official version will appear in
the bound volume of the Official Reports.
May 12, 2026
A party may file with the Supreme Court a
Samuel A. Christensen petition to review an adverse decision by the
Clerk of Court of Appeals Court of Appeals. See WIS. STAT. § 808.10
and RULE 809.62.

Appeal No. 2024AP1568 Cir. Ct. No. 2008FA463

STATE OF WISCONSIN IN COURT OF APPEALS
DISTRICT III

IN RE THE MARRIAGE OF:

ROBERT LEESON WILSON,

PETITIONER-RESPONDENT,

V.

JANET MARIE COSGROVE,

RESPONDENT-APPELLANT.

APPEAL from an order of the circuit court for Outagamie County:
MITCHELL J. METROPULOS, Judge. Affirmed.

Before Stark, P.J., Hruz, and Gill, JJ.

Per curiam opinions may not be cited in any court of this state as precedent

or authority, except for the limited purposes specified in WIS. STAT. RULE 809.23(3).
No. 2024AP1568

¶1 PER CURIAM. Janet Cosgrove appeals from a postdivorce order
that terminated her ex-husband Robert Wilson’s obligation to pay her
maintenance. Cosgrove challenges both the circuit court’s legal conclusion that
there had been a substantial change in circumstances since the last maintenance
order and its exercise of discretion in deciding that termination was warranted.
We affirm.

BACKGROUND

¶2 The facts relevant to our review do not appear to be disputed. 1 The
parties separated in 2009 and divorced in 2010, following a 31-year marriage.
During the marriage, Wilson completed medical school and a residency and then
worked as a cardiologist, while Cosgrove gave up her career as a nurse in order to
raise the parties’ children and maintain the family home. By the time of the
separation, Wilson was earning $300,000 per year plus bonuses, and Cosgrove had
not worked for about 30 years but was attributed an earning capacity of $30,000 a
year.

¶3 The circuit court incorporated into the divorce judgment a Legal
Separation Agreement (LSA) reached by the parties. Under the agreement, the
parties equally divided a $2.3 million marital estate, and Wilson was to make
biweekly maintenance payments to Cosgrove of $4,846 (which would equate to
$10,500 a month), plus 42% of all bonuses Wilson received, for an indefinite
period of time, terminable upon Cosgrove remarrying. The parties further agreed

1
Cosgrove disputes whether it is appropriate to consider facts about the parties’ financial
situation in 2019 that were not the subject of explicit findings by the court commissioner at that
time, but she does not dispute that evidence of those facts was introduced in 2024.

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No. 2024AP1568

that it would be “reasonable” for Wilson to retire at age 64 and that the court
would be able to review both the amount and duration of further maintenance in
the event that Wilson were to retire or reduce his workload.

¶4 The amount of maintenance was modified several times over the
ensuing years as Wilson’s income fluctuated. In 2019, when Wilson was 66 years
old, maintenance was modified to biweekly payments of $3,231 (which would
equate to $7,000 a month), plus an annual payment of 42% of any salary Wilson
received beyond his anticipated base salary and 30% of any bonuses Wilson
received. At that time, Wilson was opening a new practice and transitioning to
part-time work with an anticipated annual base salary of $200,000, while
Cosgrove was earning $117 per month as a yoga instructor and drawing $1,239
each month in mutual fund dividends. Neither party was yet collecting Social
Security, although each was eligible to do so.

¶5 In 2023, when he was 70 years old, Wilson filed the motion to
terminate maintenance that is the subject of this appeal. Since the 2019
maintenance order, Wilson had further reduced his work schedule to two days a
week, resulting in a base salary of $162,500. However, with the addition of
$4,583 a month in Social Security payments, Wilson’s income had actually
increased to $217,496 a year. Wilson had not needed to draw upon any of his
investments to pay living expenses. Wilson’s financial adviser projected that
Wilson and his second wife could have $5.9 million in their portfolio by the time
Wilson was 92, based upon an assumption of consistent returns of 6.38%.

¶6 Meanwhile, Cosgrove had begun drawing $1,142 a month in Social
Security income. Cosgrove had also increased her investments by $377,557 since
the 2019 maintenance order and was earning an average of $971 a month in

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No. 2024AP1568

dividends and interest from a portfolio that was by then worth $2,636,150.
Cosgrove’s financial adviser testified that, based upon a 2024 analysis, Cosgrove
had an 86% probability of being able to pay her living expenses to age 94 based
upon her investment portfolio and Social Security income, assuming a monthly
budget of $9,000, and she could still have over $2 million in assets at that time
based upon a projected consistent return of 5.6% on her investments.

¶7 The circuit court concluded that Wilson’s further reduction of his
work schedule and base pay constituted a substantial change in circumstances, as
contemplated by the parties’ stipulation in the LSA. The court then determined
that Cosgrove had accumulated sufficient assets, property and income to meet her
expenses without maintenance. It also concluded that it would be fair to terminate
maintenance, given that Wilson had already worked well beyond his contemplated
retirement age while Cosgrove had not worked during those years.

DISCUSSION

¶8 A circuit court may modify a maintenance award when the movant
demonstrates a substantial change in the circumstances of the parties. WIS. STAT.
§ 767.59(1c)(a)1., (1f)(a) (2023-24).2 We will uphold a circuit court’s factual
findings regarding what changes have occurred since the entry of the last
maintenance order unless they are clearly erroneous, but we independently
determine as a question of law whether those changes constitute a substantial
change in circumstances. Rohde-Giovanni v. Baumgart, 2003 WI App 136, ¶5,
266 Wis. 2d 339, 667 N.W.2d 718. Once a substantial change in circumstances

2
All references to the Wisconsin Statutes are to the 2023-24 version.

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has been established, we will sustain the court’s exercise of discretion in deciding
whether to modify or terminate maintenance so long as the court reasonably
discussed and applied the proper standard of law to the facts of record. Id.

¶9 Here, the circuit court’s findings regarding changes in the parties’
income and investment portfolios since the last maintenance order were supported
by testimony and exhibits produced at the 2024 hearing. Those findings are not
clearly erroneous, and they do not contradict any findings made in support of the
prior maintenance order.

¶10 Cosgrove contends that the circuit court erred by concluding that
Wilson’s reduced workload and base pay constituted a substantial change in
circumstances because: (1) Wilson had already reduced his workload when the
2019 maintenance order was issued; and (2) Wilson’s income had actually
increased in the intervening period, when taking Social Security income into
account.

¶11 We disagree that Wilson was limited, under the parties’ stipulation,
to relying on a reduction in his workload only once to show a substantial change in
circumstances. Nothing in the parties’ stipulation indicates such a limitation.
Rather, the stipulation appears to contemplate that Wilson could reduce his
workload over time, as he did here, eventually reaching a point where the parties’
originally agreed-upon maintenance could end.

¶12 Moreover, even without the stipulation, Wilson would have the
opportunity under WIS. STAT. § 767.59(1f)(a) to demonstrate that a further
reduction in his hours was significant enough to qualify as a substantial change in
circumstances. Here, while it is true that Wilson had actually increased his
income since the last order by drawing upon Social Security, so had Cosgrove. In

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No. 2024AP1568

addition, Cosgrove had substantially increased her investment portfolio since the
last maintenance order was entered. We conclude that the combined facts that
Wilson had further reduced his workload, that both parties had begun drawing
Social Security, and that Cosgrove had substantially increased her investment
portfolio established a substantial change in the parties’ circumstances.

¶13 Cosgrove next argues that the circuit court failed to give proper
consideration to the twin objectives of fairness and support when exercising its
discretion to terminate maintenance. See Rohde-Giovanni v. Baumgart, 2024
WI 27, ¶30, 269 Wis. 2d 619, 676 N.W.2d 452. Cosgrove’s disagreement with the
court’s view of those factors does not mean that the court did not properly
consider them, however. To the contrary, the court rationally explained why it
believed that: (1) maintenance was no longer needed to advance the support
objective, based upon Cosgrove’s portfolio; and (2) fairness did not require
continued maintenance after Wilson had already worked six years beyond the age
when the parties had agreed it would have been reasonable for him to retire.

¶14 This is not a situation such as Heppner v. Heppner, 2009 WI
App 90, ¶10, 319 Wis. 2d 237, 768 N.W.2d 261, where the circuit court preset a
four-year limited term of maintenance without considering whether the dependent
spouse could realistically achieve a standard of living comparable to that enjoyed
by the parties during the marriage within that time frame. Rather, here, the court
considered whether Cosgrove had already achieved a standard of living reasonably
comparable to that enjoyed during the marriage and would be able to maintain it.
Cosgrove’s contention that the court should have given more weight to her
arguments that she had contributed to Wilson’s career to the detriment of her own,
and that she could not enjoy the standard of living she could have anticipated if the
parties had not divorced without invading her assets, amounts to little more than

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No. 2024AP1568

an attempt to have this court substitute our judgment for that of the circuit court as
to what was fair under the circumstances. We will not do so. We conclude that
the circuit court’s decision was reasonably within its discretion.

By the Court.—Order affirmed.

This opinion will not be published. See WIS. STAT.
RULE 809.23(1)(b)5.

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