Bryant v. Bryant

• Decision Date: 23 March 1972
• Docket Number: No. 5118,5118
• Citation: 478 S.W.2d 602
• Parties: Murray Handley BRYANT, Appellant, v. Sara Christine BRYANT, Appellee.
• Court: Texas Court of Appeals

Page 602

478 S.W.2d 602

Murray Handley BRYANT, Appellant, v. Sara Christine BRYANT, Appellee.

No. 5118.

Court of Civil Appeals of Texas,

Waco.

March 23, 1972.

Ralph W. Currie, Muse, Currie & Kohen, Dallas, for appellant (on appeal only).

Joe Riddles, Tygrett, Riddles & Dollinger, Dallas, for appellee.

OPINION

JAMES, Justice.

This is a divorce case. The trial court, sitting without a jury, granted each of the parties a divorce, and in addition thereto gave Mrs. Bryant (Respondent-Appellee) a judgment against Mr. Bryant (Petitioner-Appellant) for $800.00 as attorney's fees plus an additional $1700.00 as her share of the community property. No children were born to or adopted by the parties during the marriage.

Appellant contends that the trial court abused his discretion by requiring Appellant to pay $1700.00 or even any sum to appellee as her share of the community property, saying there was no community property to be divided, or if there was any, that it was substantially less than $1700.00. We overrule these contentions and affirm the trial court's judgment.

The record reflects that Appellant requested no findings of fact and conclusions of law, and none were made by the trial court.

The parties married February 22, 1970 and were divorced by judgment entered August 30, 1971, the marriage having been of nearly seventeen months duration. At the time of trial, the parties had in their possession the following items of personal property which were for reasons hereinafter stated, presumably community property; one bull bought during the marriage valued by Appellant at $285.00, fifteen to twenty calves born four months or less before the trial worth $60.00 to $75.00 per head according to Appellant, $900.00 in a checking account and $200.00 in cash in Appellant's pocket, a hospitalization insurance policy for a year costing $315.60 bought by Appellant shortly before trial, which covered only the Appellant and his son by a former marriage but not Appellee, a 1958 International flatbed truck and hayloader valued by Appellant at $700.00, and a one-half interest in a posthole digger, said one-half interest being worth $100.00. The total value of these items of personalty ranges from the low extreme of $3300.60 to the high extreme of $4000.60. Manifestly, the figure of $1700.00 awarded to Appellee as her share of the community property was well within the range of reasonableness and could not by any standard be viewed as an abuse of discretion on the part of the trial court.

Looking at the matter from another viewpoint, let us consider what the parties brought into the marriage. She (Appellee) brought about $500.00 in money, some household furniture and a used automobile with a note against it. He (Appellant) brought about $18,000.00 cash into the marriage, consisting of a $10,000.00 certificate of deposit in a Garland bank, and the balance in a safety deposit box and a checking account. He also owned before the marriage a vendor's lien note in the original principal amount of $107,010.00, dated July 15, 1968, which he acquired from the sale of a piece of real estate in Dallas County, Texas, which note was payable in annual installments and which yielded two installments of $6,955.68 each of interest, or a total of $13,911.36 during the marriage. Moreover, Appellant owned a farm in Hunt County, Texas, as his separate property, against which he owed a secured indebtedness, and upon which he made an annual payment of $3899.10, consisting of $2500.00 on the principal and $1399.10 interest. The farm showed an operating loss as far as income tax records were concerned. Appellant also owned at the time of marriage a house and lot in Dallas County, Texas, which he used as his residence, which had a secured debt against it; the monthly payments of which were $104.00 each, upon which debt the sum of $1872.00 was expended by the parties during the marriage.

During the marriage, in addition to the $13,911.36 interest income above referred to, the parties had this cash income: $379.70 interest on the $10,000.00 certificate of deposit above referred to, $916.00 from sale of calves, $46.00 per month veteran's disability compensation paid to Appellant as a disabled veteran, plus an undetermined amount of earnings by Appellee from her services in various jobs she held during the marriage.

The Appellant never made any attempt to separate any funds in any manner, but commingled money coming in during the marriage with what the parties had at the time of marriage, and made expenditures therefrom out of such funds without regard to any effort to keep a record on what might be his or her separate debts as opposed to community debts. He kept some cash in a checking account, some in a safety deposit box, and some on his person, but never with any effort to keep any record...