Cottman v. Cottman, 81-577

• Decision Date: 08 September 1982
• Docket Number: No. 81-577,81-577
• Parties: J. Stewart COTTMAN, Jr., Appellant, v. Marie Antoinette COTTMAN, Appellee.
• Court: Florida District Court of Appeals

Page 1241

418 So.2d 1241

J. Stewart COTTMAN, Jr., Appellant, v. Marie Antoinette COTTMAN, Appellee.

No. 81-577.

District Court of Appeal of Florida,

Fourth District.

Sept. 8, 1982.

Larry Klein and Cone, Wagner, Nugent, Johnson, Hazouri & Roth, P.A., West Palm Beach, for appellant.

Cheryl Schreiber of Schreiber & Schreiber, Hollywood, for appellee.

GLICKSTEIN, Judge.

The trial court has ably dissected the legal issues involved in the parties' dissolution of marriage. It fashioned a final judgment which we find to be unflawed but for the award of attorney's fees to the wife.

The parties, both middle-aged and previously divorced, met and married in France in 1968. At the time, appellant-husband was a state department official stationed there and appellee-wife was a French national. They resided together until June of 1977, a year after appellant retired, when appellee was unceremoniously asked to leave the home of appellant's mother. The trial court found appellant thereafter secreted himself until April of 1979, when he surfaced in Florida.

There are three issues before us. The first is whether the trial court erred in awarding the wife $27,000, one-half of the uncommitted proceeds from the sale of the parties' Washington, D.C., home minus the husband's special equity of $8,000. We hold it did not.

The evidence showed the parties acquired the home in 1969 with funds appellant provided from the proceeds of life insurance policies. After residing there for about two years, the parties moved to Europe; they returned to Washington, D.C., in 1975. Because of an existing lease, they did not move back into the home upon their return. In December of 1976, the home was sold and the parties received a net check, payable to them both, for $61,939.58. Appellee endorsed the check and appellant deposited it into his account. With the proceeds the parties had intended to purchase a retirement home.

At trial the parties agreed District of Columbia law governed the disposition of the marital domicile. That law provides for property acquired during the marriage to be distributed within the broad discretion of the court in an equitable, just and reasonable manner. Turpin v. Turpin, 403 A.2d 1144 (D.C. 1979); Benvenuto v. Benvenuto, 389 A.2d 795 (D.C. 1978); Finch v. Finch, 378 A.2d 1092 (D.C. 1977). Appellant has failed to show the division of property ordered by the trial court to be inequitable, unjust or unreasonable.

The second issue is whether the trial court erred by awarding appellee $10,000 as lump sum alimony. We hold it did not.

Appellant sought to prevent the trial court from making this award, as well as the $27,000 award, by painting appellee as a millionairess with a substantial interest in a 400-acre French estate and by relying upon the equitable consideration involved in his execution, one day before marriage, of an antenuptial agreement in which he relinquished any claim upon appellee's property. There is no question he executed the agreement and spent at least $5,000 for renovations to appellee's apartment in her family's property. Beyond that, however, the evidence did not establish with definitive clarity the...