Carlisle v. Allen

• Decision Date: 29 July 2010
• Docket Number: No. 2007-CT-02047-SCT.,2007-CT-02047-SCT.
• Citation: 40 So.3d 1252
• Parties: Arthur D. CARLISLE, Administrator of the Estate of Charles E. Allen, III, Deceasedv.Janet Ellen Davis ALLEN.
• Court: Mississippi Supreme Court

40 So.3d 1252

Arthur D. CARLISLE, Administrator of the Estate of Charles E. Allen, III, Deceasedv.Janet Ellen Davis ALLEN.

No. 2007-CT-02047-SCT.

Supreme Court of Mississippi.

July 29, 2010.

Michael J. Vallette, Ocean Springs, attorney for appellant.

Joseph Edgar Fillingane, Carol Ann Estes Bustin, Purvis, attorneys for appellee.

EN BANC.

ON WRIT OF CERTIORARI

PIERCE, Justice, for the court:

¶ 1. A divorced couple, Charles Allen and Janet Allen, filed a petition to revoke their divorce. While the petition was pending, Charles died. The chancellor initially quashed the motion. On rehearing, the chancellor found that Janet had produced sufficient evidence of reconciliation and entered an order revoking the divorce. Arthur Carlisle, the administrator of Charles's estate, appealed on his behalf. The Court of Appeals-finding cases in which a party to a pending divorce died prior to a final entry of divorce to be analogous-held that the chancery court did not have jurisdiction to hold an evidentiary hearing, and reversed and rendered the matter. Janet filed a petition for writ of certiorari, which this Court granted.

FACTS

¶ 2. Charles and Janet Allen were married on November 24, 1996, and divorced on September 23, 2002, in the Chancery Court of Pearl River County. The couple had no children during their marriage. On May 17, 2006, Janet and Charles filed a Joint Application to Revoke Judgment of Divorce, which was properly signed by both parties, in the chancery clerk's office of Pearl River County. This application was prepared by Arthur D. Carlisle. The parties took no further action on the petition, and Charles died on June 16, 2006, prior to any evidence of reconciliation being presented to the trial court.

¶ 3. The trial court quashed the application to set aside the divorce nearly one year after Charles's death. The trial court's order stated that it would allow Janet to file a timely request for reconsideration, if she could show sufficient facts of a satisfactory reconciliation. Carlisle represented Charles's estate as its administrator.

¶ 4. Janet filed for reconsideration and testified to the following facts regarding her reconciliation with Charles: the two had maintained their relationship after the divorce; Charles and Janet had continued to talk and go out together; Charles had a private telephone line put in Janet's house so he could call her; the two had spent every weekend together from March 2006 until Charles's death in June 2006 Charles had called her multiple times a day while she was recovering from a hip injury she incurred following Hurricane Katrina; Charles had plans to sell his house and move back into the former marital home with Janet; and the couple had opened a joint banking account.

¶ 5. Janet also testified that the reason the couple initially had divorced was that Janet had become sick during the marriage and Janet's mother, Mary Davis, had encouraged her to get divorced. Janet testified that Charles did not come into the courtroom the day they were divorced. Regarding their relationship after the divorce, Janet stated, “we were always close. It was like we were never really divorced.” Once they filed the petition to revoke the divorce, the couple both began wearing their wedding rings.

¶ 6. On cross-examination, Janet testified that Charles had paid the bills at his house, and-other than the bill for the phone line Charles had placed in Janet's home-Davis had paid the bills at her house. After Charles's death, his body was found at his home by his housekeeper, Beverly Slaydon. Janet was at her home and was informed of his death by Slaydon.

¶ 7. Davis testified that the coroner sent Charles's personal effects to Davis. She said she supposed the coroner did this because of her daughter's relationship with Charles.

¶ 8. Slaydon testified that she had met Janet while working for Charles in his home. Slaydon testified that she often had talked to Janet on the phone, but Charles would not give her Janet's phone number because it was “just for him and [Janet].” She testified that Charles was on the phone with Janet constantly, that Janet regularly had spent weekends at Charles's house, and Charles and Janet would hold hands, talk, and laugh. In her opinion, Charles and Janet loved each other very much. Finally, Slaydon testified that the only other woman she ever saw at Charles's home was Janet's personal care provider, Patricia Beard.

¶ 9. Beard cared for Janet as she recovered from a hip injury and, during that time, drove Charles and Janet to Poplarville to file the petition to revoke their divorce. She saw Charles sign the joint application and take it to the courthouse. She testified to seeing Charles three to four times per week, and said that Charles would bring Janet lunch, flowers, or presents. She stated that Charles and Janet would spend hours together on the phone. In her opinion, Charles and Janet had a very loving and affectionate relationship. It was her understanding that the couple had wanted to have their divorce revoked and that Charles had planned to return to the marital home. She stated, “[Charles] never felt that they were divorced. He wanted to be with her. He told me that she was his life partner.” Finally, Beard testified that Charles had asked her to find his wedding band, and she had seen him wearing it.

¶ 10. Carlisle testified that he was a close friend of Charles's, and he had known him since 1969. He stated that he had prepared the application to revoke the divorce, but that it was his understanding that Charles “never intended to marry [Janet] or set aside the divorce.” He further testified that he previously had prepared four or five applications to revoke the divorce for Charles, but Charles had thrown those applications away. Carlisle thought Charles felt cheated out of the marital home in the divorce, and was using the revocation of divorce to “recover what he thought was rightfully his.”

¶ 11. Carlisle further testified that he regularly had visited Charles and that he never had noticed signs of anyone staying with him. When he visited Janet after Charles's death, Carlisle said the first thing Janet told him was that she was not going to pay for the funeral arrangements. As a result, he made a number of the funeral arrangements personally. However, Janet testified that Carlisle volunteered to make the funeral arrangements and refused to allow her to pay for the service. Finally, Carlisle testified that Charles had a personal relationship with a female attorney before and after Hurricane Katrina. While he did not know the woman's name, it was someone other than Janet.

RULING IN THE CHANCERY COURT

¶ 12. Carlisle filed a motion to quash the application to revoke the divorce. The chancery court subsequently entered an order quashing the application on June 11, 2007. The trial court reasoned that “no hearing or other evidence of the reconciliation was presented prior to the death of Charles E. Allen, III,” and found that the motion therefore should be quashed. However, the order specified that the chancery court would “entertain a motion to reconsider this finding should the co-applicant timely file such a request and show sufficient facts evidencing a satisfactory reconciliation of the parties.”

¶ 13. Janet filed a motion for reconsideration eleven days later, on June 22, 2007. Carlisle subsequently filed a motion to strike Janet's motion for reconsideration, arguing that it was untimely and that Janet had failed in the motion to show sufficient facts evidencing a reconciliation. The chancery court held a hearing on the matter, in which both Janet and Charles's estate presented testimony regarding the couple's reconciliation, as described above. The chancellor entered his order on October 24, 2007, finding jurisdiction proper and granting the revocation of divorce.

¶ 14. The chancery court also found evidence of intent to revive the marriage in that Charles and Janet had jointly filed the petition. Further evidence which supported an intention to revive the marriage noted by the chancellor included: Charles and Janet often had stayed with one another, went out together, talked frequently, and had opened a joint bank account in their names. The chancellor dismissed the claim that the petition to revoke the divorce was an attempt by Charles to acquire title to the marital home.

¶ 15. Carlisle timely appealed on behalf of Charles's estate, raising several issues. Those issues can be fairly summarized as follows:

I. Whether the chancery court had jurisdiction after the death of Charles.

II. Whether the chancellor erred in finding that Janet had produced sufficient evidence to revoke the divorce.

III. Whether the chancellor erred in failing to strike Janet's motion to reconsider as untimely and for failure to set forth significant facts, and subsequently holding a hearing on the matter.

IV. Whether the chancellor erred in not dismissing the action to set aside the divorce because Janet did not file a revivor after Charles's death.

HOLDING OF THE COURT OF APPEALS

¶ 16. The Court of Appeals held that the chancellor should not have conducted a hearing on the matter, because it lacked jurisdiction. This Court previously has heard a case involving a petition to revoke divorce which was filed by only one spouse after the death of the other spouse. Wells v. Roberson, 209 So.2d 919 (Miss.1968). However, the Court of Appeals correctly found that those facts were distinguishable from the present matter. The court further noted that no cases directly on point could be found. Carlisle v. Allen, 40 So.3d 1265, ¶ 15 (Miss.Ct.App.2009). Therefore, this is an issue of first impression in Mississippi.

¶ 17. The Court of Appeals found that the most analogous cases are those in which a married couple files for divorce and one of the parties dies before a valid divorce decree is entered. In such cases, this Court has held, “upon the death of one of the parties to a purely...