Dreves v. Dreves, 91-093

Citation628 A.2d 558,160 Vt. 330
Decision Date11 June 1993
Docket NumberNo. 91-093,91-093
CourtUnited States State Supreme Court of Vermont
PartiesJanice M. DREVES v. Richard F. DREVES.

Catherine E. Clark and Gregory Jeffers, Law Clerk (on the brief), Burlington, for plaintiff-appellant.

Paul D. Jarvis of Jarvis & Kaplan, Burlington, for defendant-appellee.

Before ALLEN, C.J., and GIBSON, DOOLEY, MORSE and JOHNSON, JJ.

ALLEN, Chief Justice.

Plaintiff appeals from an order of the Grand Isle Family Court distributing the marital assets and declining to award maintenance. We reverse.

The parties married in 1984 and separated in January 1990. Plaintiff is now forty-four years old and defendant is age fifty. Before the marriage, plaintiff lived in Pennsylvania, where she earned $19,000 annually as an office manager. After she married defendant, she moved to Vermont and was not employed for the first two years. The trial court characterized plaintiff's unemployment as resulting from a mutual agreement, but plaintiff argues it was at defendant's insistence. Plaintiff is currently a personnel administration supervisor earning $28,000 annually. Defendant earns $50,000 annually at IBM.

The parties initially lived in defendant's Westford home, and then purchased a home in Grand Isle in 1984 for $107,000, $70,000 of which came from defendant's funds and the balance from a mortgage of about $37,000. The court found that the value of the house doubled during the years it was owned by the parties, adding $107,000 in value, for a total of $214,000. At the conclusion of the marriage, the parties obtained a home equity loan, thereby increasing the total mortgage indebtedness to about $47,000. Much of the home equity loan was used to finance plaintiff's purchase of a new $16,000 car. The resulting net value of the home was about $167,000. Based on the court's finding as to the current net equity in the house, the total increase in the net value of the house during the marriage was approximately $97,000 ($167,000, less the initial $70,000 net value upon purchase of the house).

The court awarded plaintiff $37,000, the car she had purchased (free of the home equity indebtedness related to it, which defendant assumes under the order), personalty in her possession, and the balance of her future college tuition and cost of books not met by her employer (which was paying ninety percent). No specific value was assigned to the tuition and books.

Defendant received, in addition to the house, an Investors Diversified Services investment account valued at $35,502, a tax-deferred savings plan at IBM valued at $30,947, an IBM pension plan valued at $40,007, and an IRA account valued at $22,106, totalling $128,562, $105,000 of which had been acquired during the marriage, according to plaintiff. The court did not make findings on the increase in value in the investment and retirement plans, did not rule on plaintiff's contention that reasonable value be assigned to her contribution as homemaker during the marriage, and did not award her maintenance, which she had sought as an alternative to her request for a share of the marital property. The present appeal followed.

Plaintiff argues first that the court erred in finding that the current value of the homeplace was only $214,000. We disagree. Plaintiff's main argument is that the court misunderstood the testimony of her expert witness, who testified that "[w]ithout any kind of improvement, I would suspect that ... that property would have doubled in value." Plaintiff testified that there were extensive improvements to the property, and the court agreed in its findings. But the court noted that two houses in the neighborhood had remained on the market for many months without being sold and found that "the real estate market is currently depressed." It was not bound by the testimony of plaintiff's expert.

Plaintiff also argues that the court should have admitted and considered a letter from defendant's counsel conceding that the property's value was $250,000. Whether or not the letter (which did not appear to have been written in the context of a settlement offer) should have been admitted, it would not have estopped defendant from arguing a lower value at trial. Thus, even if the letter had been admitted, the court's finding that the homeplace had a current value of $214,000 would not have been clearly erroneous.

Plaintiff argues that even accepting the court's $214,000 valuation for the home, the distribution of marital assets was so inequitable as to constitute an abuse of discretion, particularly in light of the absence of any explanation for the disparity. Section 751 of Title 15 requires that the court "equitably divide and assign the property" and sets out twelve factors that the court "may consider." 15 V.S.A. § 751. The trial court has discretion in considering these factors, and is not required to explain the exercise of its discretion with mathematical precision or specify the weight given to each of the statutory factors. Semprebon v. Semprebon, 157 Vt. 209, 215, 596 A.2d 361, 364 (1991). Thus, we will not disturb the court's findings of fact unless, viewing the evidence in the light most favorable to the prevailing party and excluding the effect of modifying evidence, a finding is clearly erroneous. Id. at 214, 596 A.2d at 363.

The court's discretion, however, is not unlimited. We have always required that the findings "provide a clear statement as to what was decided and why." Richard v. Richard, 146 Vt. 286, 287, 501 A.2d 1190, 1190 (1985). The principal findings in the present case fall...

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16 cases
  • Kasser v. Kasser, 03-065.
    • United States
    • Vermont Supreme Court
    • January 6, 2006
    ...worth $40,000, and she will be named as a beneficiary in husband's life insurance policy. ¶ 35. This case is not like Dreves v. Dreves, 160 Vt. 330, 628 A.2d 558 (1993), on which wife relies. In that case, we reversed the family court's property distribution where the wife received 12.5% of......
  • State v. Hemingway
    • United States
    • Vermont Supreme Court
    • May 9, 2014
  • Kanaan v. Kanaan
    • United States
    • Vermont Supreme Court
    • March 24, 1995
    ...See Klein, 150 Vt. at 471, 555 A.2d at 385. The court is not bound to follow the opinions of expert witnesses, Dreves v. Dreves, 160 Vt. 330, 332, 628 A.2d 558, 560 (1993), a principle that is obvious where the testimony of experts is in conflict. Although it is better practice to specify t......
  • Harris v. Harris
    • United States
    • Vermont Supreme Court
    • June 3, 1994
    ...live for herself and her daughter. The property division here is strikingly similar to one that we overturned in Dreves v. Dreves, 160 Vt. 330, 334, 628 A.2d 558, 560 (1993). There, the wife received about 12.5% of the marital assets. The trial court's only explanation for its decision was ......
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