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| A dictionary definition . . . in French because . . . why not? |
By Andrew Delaney
Editor's Note: Sometimes you go to a doctor to get a second opinion. And sometimes the editors at SCOV Law write summaries about the same opinion so you get to read two versions of the same case. For the other one, click here.
This is a case about a high-asset, short-term marriage. Both parties brought significant assets to this marriage, which was a second marriage for both of them. They married in 2007 and split in 2014. Between Connecticut and Vermont, the parties bought and sold a handful of houses and a condo.
Husband works in the financial industry. Wife is a certified paramedic and holds a bachelor’s degree. At the time of their divorce, wife planned to enroll in a two-year physician’s assistant program to increase her earning potential.
There was a fourteen-day hearing followed by a twenty-eight page written decision. The trial court looked at the distribution factors, and found that it wouldn’t be equitable to split things up according to the percentage of assets brought into the marriage, even though the marriage was relatively brief. The trial court found the total value of the marital estate to be just above $5M (after subtracting the debt).
In considering how to distribute the property, the trial court found:
(1) husband brought substantially more assets into the marriage; (2) he was more likely to maintain employment that would compensate him at a level consistent with the parties’ lifestyle during the marriage; (3) wife made significant contributions to the household, but husband contributed to a greater degree to the maintenance and/or increase in the value of the marital estate; and (4) wife had not been gainfully employed through much of the parties’ relationship.The trial court awarded the parties’ home to husband, but wife was to stay until her daughter graduated from high school. The court ordered husband to pay wife $1.1625 million for wife’s share of the real property, and divvied up the parties’ substantial personal property.
On the spousal maintenance front, the trial court reasoned it made more sense to award additional property in lieu of maintenance, and after considering the statutory factors, awarded an additional $970K to wife as “both part of an equitable property distribution and, above and beyond that, additional property in lieu of maintenance.”
Both parties moved to amend or clarify the final order, and the court amended some findings and conclusions and clarified that the $970K was partly an offset for a bank account awarded to husband and partly a property-in-lieu-of-maintenance award. The trial court did not clarify, however, what part was for what.
Wife appeals. She argues first that the trial court should’ve considered the parties’ premarital cohabitation period in establishing its property distribution and maintenance award. Second, she argues that the trial court screwed up when it didn’t differentiate between equitable property distribution and property in lieu of maintenance in making the additional property award. And finally, she argues that the trial court’s marital estate valuation was wiggity wiggity wack.
SCOV first deals with the length-of-the-marriage question. This is quick. The trial court has broad discretion here. Wife was mostly financially independent during the premarital phase and both parties were either unemployed or underemployed. They didn’t mix finances until 2008. So, the court didn’t find the three pre-marriage-but-still-living-together years particularly relevant to its analysis and didn’t include them. SCOV is fine with this. And while not explicitly stated in the opinion, I think it’s reasonable to infer here that it also would have been fine if the trial court included the premarital cohabiting years because it’s one of those “broad discretion” areas.
SCOV next turns to the mixed “equitable property distribution” and “additional property in lieu of maintenance” argument. Wife asserts that this was wrong because the trial court is first supposed to make an equitable distribution of marital assets, then turn to whether maintenance is necessary, and then decide what’s appropriate. Wife essentially argues the trial court short-circuited that process and conflated things and didn’t make factual findings to support the award.
SCOV notes that wife has the burden here of showing “that no reasonable basis exists to support the award.” Here, the trial court made extensive factual findings and did a lot of equitable distributin’ (I just made that phrase up) that gave wife roughly 40% of the entire marital estate before moving on to maintenance. The trial court then made its mixed part equitable and part maintenance $970K award to wife.
SCOV notes that when husband moved to clarify the reasoning behind the $970K amount, wife opposed the motion and argued that neither equitable distribution nor maintenance is an exact science.
SCOV reasons that to the extent wife argues that the trial court’s findings were insufficient, she’s waived that argument under the invited error doctrine. Now, I could explain this doctrine all fancy and legal-like, but it’s more fun for all of us if I explain it like this: the “invited error” doctrine is best understood as the “you got what you asked for” doctrine. If you ask the court to make a mistake and the court makes a mistake, then you don’t get to say it’s a mistake later. Capiche?
SCOV allows that the trial court could’ve been more specific in explaining how it landed where it did number-wise, but wife’s burden here is to show that the award was inequitable or unjust and we’re not quite there. The court’s findings demonstrate that it was aware of the financial pieces in play and that it made its award pursuant to its statutory dictates (though a little more specificity would have been helpful).
So, the “mixed award,” though leaving something to be desired, isn’t getting overturned.
Finally, there’s some back and forth about stock options and deferred compensation that are potentially worth quite a bit. The problem here is that the trial court made some contradictory statements about how and at what point it was valuing the deferred compensation and stock options. Part of the issue is that at one point, the trial court said that it wouldn’t treat post-separation (but pre-final order) as marital assets.
“That’s not how this works,” says SCOV. By statute, everything up to the date of the final order goes into the pot. But how it gets allocated is a different matter. In other words, even though it goes into the pot, the trial court could take it out after.
Here, SCOV isn’t entirely sure what was decided and why due to the inconsistent statements by the trial court. So this part gets sent back—with specific instructions—for the trial court to “identify and value any deferred compensation earned by husband during the marriage, including after the date of separation, apportion it in an equitable manner, and explain the basis for the apportionment.”
SCOV also remands on two additional points: (1) an allocation of debt to husband based on legal fees and expenses when the court said it wasn’t considering legal fees and expenses; and (2) a claimed mathematical error overvaluing the marital estate by almost $100K.
So this one gets mostly affirmed and sent back for some clarification and modification on the trial court’s valuations and distributions of the marital estate.
Judge Teachout, specially assigned, dissents. In Judge Teachout’s view, there aren’t any deficiencies that require remand. Though the dissent acknowledges that the trial court could have used more accurate phrasing, overall, none of the claimed errors amount to anything more than harmless. Judge Teachout would affirm the whole shebang.
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