Hall v. Hall

• Decision Date: 10 August 1993
• Docket Number: No. 920052-CA,920052-CA
• Citation: 858 P.2d 1018
• Parties: Virginia B. HALL, Plaintiff and Appellee, v. Blaine D. HALL, Defendant and Appellant.
• Court: Utah Court of Appeals

Page 1018

858 P.2d 1018

Virginia B. HALL, Plaintiff and Appellee, v. Blaine D. HALL, Defendant and Appellant.

No. 920052-CA.

Court of Appeals of Utah.

Aug. 10, 1993.

Richard M. Hutchins, Provo, for defendant and appellant.

Craig M. Snyder and Leslie W. Slaugh, Provo, for plaintiff and appellee.

Before BENCH, BILLINGS and ORME, JJ.

ORME, Judge:

Appellant, Blaine Hall, appeals, inter alia, the trial court's order distributing marital property between the parties and imputing income to appellant for purposes of calculating alimony and child support. We reverse for lack of adequate findings and remand.

STANDARD OF REVIEW

This court accords the trial court considerable discretion in determining the financial interests of divorced parties. Allred v. Allred, 797 P.2d 1108, 1111 (Utah App.1990). Although "the court's 'actions are entitled to a presumption of validity,' " id. (quoting Hansen v. Hansen, 736 P.2d 1055, 1056 (Utah App.), cert. denied, 765 P.2d 1277 (Utah 1987)), we cannot affirm its determination when the trial court abuses its discretion. Allred, 797 P.2d at 1111. The trial court abuses its discretion when it fails to enter specific, detailed findings supporting its financial determinations. See id. Findings are adequate only if they are "sufficiently detailed and include enough subsidiary facts to disclose the steps by which the ultimate conclusion on each factual issue was reached." Id. (quoting Stevens v. Stevens, 754 P.2d 952, 958 (Utah App.1988)). See also Sukin v. Sukin, 842 P.2d 922, 924 (Utah App.1992) (detailed findings are necessary to determine whether trial court has exercised its discretion in a rational manner).

Appellant raises a number of issues on appeal, some of which have no merit and require no discussion. Accordingly, we see no reason to engage in exhaustive treatment of the facts surrounding the parties' divorce. We recite only the pertinent facts in the course of treating the issues that have merit.

PROPERTY DISTRIBUTION

During their marriage, the parties constructed a home in Alpine, Utah. Prior to or during the construction of the home, appellee, Virginia Hall, received from her father's estate a total of $21,000. Of this sum, $6,000 was used as a down payment Appellant claims the trial court abused its discretion in ordering that appellee's inheritance be reimbursed solely from his portion of the equity in the home. Rather, appellant argues, the trial court should have returned appellee's inheritance of $21,000 from the total equity of approximately $52,000, and then distributed the remainder of the equity equally between the parties. Appellee's contribution of her separate funds to the marital estate would thereby be repaid from the marital estate, and each party would have then been presumptively entitled to half of the approximately $31,000 remaining home equity, or roughly $15,500.

                on the home, and an additional $15,000 was contributed toward its construction. 1  During the divorce proceedings, the marital home was sold.  After payment of the existing mortgage obligation, real estate commissions, and other costs of sale, the parties realized a total of $52,403.88 in net equity from the sale of the home.  As is typical, the trial court ordered that the net proceeds be divided equally between the parties. 2  The court then deducted from appellant's share certain late fees and delinquent interest in the amount of $192.60.  Next, without explanation or explicit recognition that appellant's separate funds were being used to reimburse appellee's contribution to the marital estate, the trial court ordered that $21,000 of the remainder of appellant's share of the equity be applied to reimburse appellee the funds from her inheritance which were used in the purchase and construction of the parties' home.  Appellant was therefore left with net proceeds of approximately $5,000, 3 and appellee received approximately $47,000
                

In Burt v. Burt, 799 P.2d 1166 (Utah App.1990), this court observed that trial courts must distribute property between the parties to a divorce in a fair, systematic fashion. See id. at 1172 & n. 10. The Burt court noted that the trial court should "first properly categorize the parties' property as part of the marital estate or as the separate property of one or the other. Each party is presumed to be entitled to all of his or her separate property and fifty percent of the marital property." Id. at 1172. The Burt court continued:

But rather than simply enter such a decree [automatically], the court should then consider the existence of exceptional circumstances and, if any be shown, proceed to effect an equitable distribution in light of those circumstances....

Id. Thus, under Burt, once a court makes a finding that a specific item is marital property, the law presumes that it will be shared equally between the parties unless unusual circumstances, memorialized in adequate findings, require otherwise. See also Watson v. Watson, 837 P.2d 1, 5 (Utah App.1992) (premarital property and inheritances are viewed as separate property, and, normally, equity requires that each party retain the separate property brought to the marriage).

While conceding that the trial court's property division did not result in an equal division of the equity, appellee claims the trial court was not obligated to distribute the equity in the home equally. See Newmeyer v. Newmeyer, 745 P.2d 1276, 1279 n. 1 (Utah 1987) ("In determining whether a certain division of property is equitable, ... the relative abilities of the spouses to support themselves after the divorce are pertinent to an equitable ... division of the fixed assets of the marriage."). Appellee We recognize the power of the trial court to effect an equitable distribution of property by considering both parties' "contributions during the marriage and their circumstances at the time of the divorce." Id. at 1278. However, as this court held in Burt, "the court's division of the estate cannot stand undisturbed when we are not presented with sufficient findings to demonstrate that the court's ruling comports with established law." 799 P.2d at 1172.

contends that in reimbursing her inheritance from appellant's share of the equity, the trial court took into account her special circumstances, i.e., her lack of education and work experience, and the fact that the needs of the parties' autistic child and two pre-school age children precluded appellee from seeking employment outside the home. Appellant counters that these concerns were abundantly addressed by means of child support and an award of permanent alimony.

From all that appears, the court made a simple conceptual error in providing for the repayment of appellee's inheritance. The trial court made no findings as to any exceptional circumstances which took this case out of the presumptive rule of Burt and warranted repaying appellee's inheritance solely out of appellant's portion of the equity in the parties' home. Such an unequal distribution of the parties' marital property makes no sense in the absence of findings justifying the decision, see Walters v. Walters, 812 P.2d 64, 68 (Utah App.1991), cert. denied, 836 P.2d 1383 (Utah 1992), especially since appellee did not seek this result on any particular basis and where appellee's lack of education and the special needs of the children do appear to have been thoroughly dealt with in the award of permanent alimony and child support, which we do not disturb. Absent findings that would justify departure from the presumptive rule of equal distribution, we reverse and remand to give the trial judge an opportunity to enter findings supporting the unequal distribution, or, in the alternative, to divide the proceeds from the sale of the home equally after first subtracting the amount necessary to reimburse appellee's contribution. See Burt, 799 P.2d at 1170, 1172.

IMPUTATION OF INCOME

Several years ago, while employed in the computer business in California, appellant earned a salary of $55,000. Appellant later found employment in Utah as a computer consultant and software developer and worked in that capacity for at least the last three years of the parties' marriage. Appellant's gross earnings listed on his income tax returns for 1988, 1989, and 1990 averaged in excess of $100,000 per year, with average monthly gross earnings in excess of $8,500. ⁴

About ten days before trial, appellant started a new job in Vancouver, Washington, at a salary of $40,000 per year. At trial, appellant requested that the court's child support and alimony determinations be based on his current $40,000 per year income level rather than on his historical income of approximately $100,000 per year. ⁵ On the basis of the evidence introduced at trial as to appellant's income, and noting the marked disparity between appellant's $40,000 salary at the time of trial and his income over the last three years of his marriage, the trial court concluded that the only way to accurately gauge appellant's income for purposes of determining his support obligations was to rely on the historical earnings of appellant.

The court adopted rather detailed findings of fact based on the evidence adduced at trial, which established that appellant's average historical income over the three and one half years prior to trial amounted to $98,498.75 per year, with a monthly average gross income of $8,208.21.

Appellant challenges the trial court's rulings regarding his child support and alimony obligations insofar as the trial court based these obligations on appellant's historical income rather than on his income at the time of trial. Appellant's primary argument in this regard is that the trial court erred in imputing income to him without explicitly determining that he was voluntarily unemployed or underemployed as required under Utah Code Ann. § 78-45-7.5(7)(a) (1992). Additionally, he makes a subsidiary claim that in fixing the amount of income to be imputed to a...