In re Shelton
| Decision Date | 22 April 2013 |
| Docket Number | NO. 5-12-0274,5-12-0274 |
| Citation | 2013 IL App (5th) 120274 |
| Parties | In re MARRIAGE OF LINDA SUE SHELTON, Petitioner-Appellee, and DANNY LEE SHELTON, Respondent-Appellant. |
| Court | United States Appellate Court of Illinois |
NOTICE
Decision filed 04/22/13. The text of this decision may be changed or corrected prior to the filing of a Petition for Rehearing or the disposition of the same.
NOTICE
This order was filed under Supreme Court Rule 23 and may not be cited as precedent by any party except in the limited circumstances allowed under Rule 23(e)(1).
Judge, presiding.
¶ 1 Held: Because answering question certified by trial court would lead to hypothetical answer with no practical effect, this court declines to answer the question. Certified question not answered; appeal dismissed.
¶ 2 In this appeal, we are asked to answer the following question, as certified by the circuit court of Franklin County pursuant to Illinois Supreme Court Rule 308 (eff. Feb. 26, 2010).
¶ 3 "In an Illinois dissolution of marriage proceeding, can a Court divide as marital property the royalties received after the date of dissolution by an author-spouse pursuant to a publication contract executed after the date of dissolution where the underlying literary work was not in final form and had not been published as of the date of dissolution?"
¶ 5 The facts necessary to our disposition of this appeal are taken from depositiontestimony and other relevant documents provided in the supporting record on appeal provided by the respondent, Danny Lee Shelton (Danny), and in the supplemental supporting record on appeal provided by the petitioner, Linda Sue Shelton (Linda), and are as follows. Danny and Linda were married in 1984. During the course of their marriage, Danny and Linda cofounded Three Angels Broadcasting Network (3ABN), a Christian broadcasting network located in Thompsonville that disseminates its programming throughout the world. By his own admission, and as corroborated by the testimony of others, Danny has become one of the most well-known Seventh Day Adventist televangelists in the world. During their marriage, both Danny and Linda appeared in many programs televised by 3ABN, and each created intellectual property-Linda in the form of musical CDs, Danny in the form of printed and published pamphlets-that is not the subject of this appeal. However, in August 2003, Danny told Linda that he intended to write a book. According to Linda, Danny stated that he believed sales revenues from the book would be "incredible," based upon the commercial success of his earlier writings. In the months that followed, Danny produced two versions of a draft manuscript of the book: the first dated September 23, 2003, and the second-which was an edited and slightly modified version of the first-dated November 10, 2003. Each manuscript was approximately 40 pages long. Because of the similarities between the manuscripts-and because it is undisputed that each was created by Danny during the course of the marriage-we shall hereinafter collectively refer to these two documents as "the manuscript."
¶ 6 After November 2003, Danny stopped working on the manuscript until May 2004, due to the strain of marital discord. According to Linda, in January 2004, Danny showed her a copy of the manuscript. On May 24, 2004, Danny showed the manuscript to Shelley Quinn (Shelley), an author whose book Exalting His Word had been published by 3ABN in 2003 and who had done a number of live and taped programs on 3ABN prior to 2004. He askedShelley if she would like to read the manuscript, and she said that she would. Danny asked Shelley to review it and told her that if she had any suggestions, or noticed any corrections that needed to be made, to note them. As she began to review the manuscript, Shelley found it to be "a little difficult to follow and bogged down." Accordingly, Shelley "determined to sit down and rewrite." She did so because, as she later opined, she did "not think it could have been published" in its present form. She completed a rewrite of what she considered to be the first chapter of a book (the manuscript contained no chapters) on May 26, 2004, and on or around May 30, 2004, Danny told her that he loved what she had done and asked her if she would "like to just rewrite the whole book." She answered that she would, although she and Danny did not discuss terms of compensation or any other arrangements regarding this "rewriting." Shelley did not find this unusual, as she had donated Exalting His Word to 3ABN at Linda's request and had not received any of the proceeds generated by sales of the book. She assumed she was donating her services on the new book as well and stated that she wanted to write it not for monetary gain, but because God had laid the writing of the book "very definitely on [her] heart."
¶ 7 Shelley described in detail the writing process she undertook, as well as the struggles it entailed. She stated that when she read Danny's manuscript, she noted similarities between its subject matter-which, put very succinctly, involves the change of the Sabbath-and the subject matter she had recently decided to include in a book she planned to write. Nevertheless, when Danny asked her to rewrite his manuscript, she concluded that her book "would be substantially different" and that she could "still write his and then write [her] own." However, as she began to write, she "felt very selfish" and wondered if she would ever get around to writing her own book. Accordingly, she decided to expand on Danny's manuscript and include her own "teachings" about the Sabbath. Shelley described "teachings" to be things she "had studied out" from the Bible. She and her husband prayedabout what to do, and ultimately Shelley decided that she would add her teachings but put them "in under Danny's name." Her husband supported her decision, because the book would "be around a lot longer than either [Shelley] or Danny." She described the "teachings" that she added as "substantially different" than the contents of the manuscript. She also noted that because she was adding her own ideas as well as expanding on the manuscript, what she referred to as the "rewrite" was actually "the writing of the book." She later posited, as tactfully as she could, that Danny's writings about the Sabbath were "not deep enough" and that without the additions of her detailed Bible studies, she did not think the finished work would make a very convincing argument that a "Sunday-keeper" should become a "Sabbath-keeper." Nonetheless, she noted that she believed Danny's name should remain on the work because if the book contained only Shelley's name, it "would not have been marketed the way it was marketed because Danny was able to have people who came forward with large sums of money" to purchase large quantities of the book that 3ABN could then give away to viewers. She agreed that Danny's contribution to the book was "in a large part" the use of his name.
¶ 8 With regard to her actual writing process, Shelley stated that after she and her husband returned from Thompsonville to their Texas home with the manuscript and Danny's permission to "rewrite" it, she cut the manuscript up and "made little piles." Sometimes she would "cut out just a sentence," as she organized the manuscript, and other times she would discard parts of Danny's manuscript entirely. Then she "sat down and wrote." She completed a rewrite of her earlier-crafted chapter 1 on June 7, 2004, then began to work on what she later designated chapter 2. As she completed a draft of a chapter-referring, as she did so, to her own "Bible study" and to "the Seventh Day Adventist commentary" on her book-she would return to the appropriate "pile" from Danny's manuscript and would "pull out Danny's thoughts or what would be-you know, trying to keep it in a voice, because I saidI would write it in his voice." Shelley stated that as a result of this process, "there may be a sentence or two that were actually transferred in there verbatim, but very little of that would be verbatim." She noted that her inclusion of verbatim statements was intentional, so that the book would "sound like Danny."
¶ 9 Meanwhile, on June 14, 2004, as Shelley continued her work, Danny and Linda prepared divorce papers that were subsequently filed in Guam. On June 25, 2004, the Superior Court of Guam entered an order dissolving their marriage, but reserving issues of division of property. In the division of property proceedings directly relevant to this appeal, the circuit court of Franklin County recognized the termination of the marriage by the Guam decree and entered an order, unopposed by the parties, in which it concluded that the date of dissolution of the marriage was June 25, 2004.
¶ 10 On June 26, 2004, Shelley, Danny, and a number of other 3ABN employees returned on the 3ABN company jet from a 3ABN event in St. Joseph, Missouri. As Shelley rode with Danny in his pickup truck from the Marion airport to Thompsonville, she described for him what she was "including in the book." She had not, at that point, shown him any of her work. However, after hearing what was included in the book, Danny told Shelley that he felt she deserved to be a coauthor, with him, of the evolving book. As of June 26, 2004, Shelley had completed chapters 1-4 of her first draft of the book. Danny and Shelley did not discuss compensation for Shelley as a coauthor, nor did Danny say anything at that time to lead Shelley to believe that she would be compensated for her work. In deposition testimony, Shelley stated that prior to June 26, 2004, she considered herself a "ghost writer" for Danny and that after June 26, 2004, she considered herself a coauthor with him. Subsequent to June 26, 2004, Shelley continued...
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