But the way the two parties manage their divorce will remain at least as important to the state's economy as was the way they conducted their long and recently rocky marriage.

The need for a workers compensation insurer that places the greater good of Utah first moved the administrations of Gov. Mike Leavitt and Gov. Olene Walker to fight for continued state control of the WCF. Walker last year even turned down a $50 million offer from the fund to buy its freedom.

Criticism of Walker's decision - that she should have taken the money and run rather than fight and wind up with nothing - is in our view simplistic and unfair.

Tuesday's detailed Supreme Court ruling makes a strong case that the WCF had the better legal argument. Many laws that sought to protect the state's coffers from a savings-and-loan-style run on WCF, and to protect WCF's deep reserves from becoming a tempting honeypot for legislators, amounted to a gradual, perhaps unwise, but real detachment.

But the principled obligation felt by the last two governors to keep the WCF beholden to the interests of all Utahns, rather than just the fund's managers and policy-holders, was worth the effort, and the gamble.

That pressure helped curb WCF's appetite for business in other states, moving it to spin off a for-profit, multi-state company that can help Utahns with border-crossing businesses work out their coverage.

Happily, everyone seems to be on the same page when it comes to the fund's reason for being. It's not to inflate stock prices or build a corporate empire. It's to make it affordable for any business, no matter how small or risky, to buy the workers compensation insurance that both state law and common decency require.

Any itch that future WCF managers may have to join the parade of health insurance writers that exist to reduce risk by turning away those who might actually need the coverage should be salved by the fact that the fund's insure-everybody status is the only reason it still has an exemption from federal income taxes.

That prized exemption, plus a watchful Legislature and governor, should keep WCF on task, no matter who owns it.