Lynch v. Lynch

• Decision Date: 30 September 2014
• Docket Number: No. 35413.,35413.
• Court: Connecticut Court of Appeals
• Parties: Daniel LYNCH v. Laurie LYNCH.

153 Conn.App. 208

100 A.3d 968

Daniel LYNCH

v.Laurie LYNCH.

No. 35413.

Appellate Court of Connecticut.

Argued March 18, 2014.

Decided Sept. 30, 2014.

Daniel M. Lynch, self-represented, the appellant (plaintiff).

Christopher T. Goulden, Bridgeport, for the appellee (defendant).

LAVINE, BEAR and BORDEN, Js.^*

Opinion

BEAR, J.

The present matter previously was before this court in Lynch v. Lynch, 135 Conn.App. 40, 43 A.3d 667 (2012) (Lynch I ). This court reversed in part the dissolution judgment of the trial court, Hon. Howard T. Owens, Jr., judge trial referee, “as to the financial orders only, except with respect to the portion of the court's order granting the defendant's February 4, 2009 pendente lite motion for modification that applies retroactively from February 4, 2009, until the date of judgment,” and accordingly remanded the matter. Id., at 58, 43 A.3d 667. The trial court, Adelman, J., subsequently entered new financial orders pursuant to Lynch I from which the plaintiff, Daniel Lynch, now appeals. The plaintiff also appeals from the court's orders with respect to several motions filed after Lynch I and both before and after the court's December 13, 2012 memorandum of decision in this appeal.

The plaintiff specifically claims that the court improperly (1) awarded alimony to the defendant, Laurie Lynch, and not to him; (2) denied his request for equitable financial relief in his motion for modification, even though he had met his burden of establishing a substantial change in circumstances; (3) granted the defendant's October 11, 2012 motion for contempt; (4) granted the defendant's May 1, 2013 postjudgment motion for contempt; (5) calculated the reimbursement for stipulated shared household expenses owed to him by the defendant; (6) failed to calculate a pendente lite arrearage owed to him by the defendant; (7) awarded $7500 in appellate attorney's fees to the defendant; (8) entered financial orders that were inequitable to him and that demonstrated the court's bias against him; and (9) failed to hear certain of his motions and denied others without consideration of his due process rights. We disagree with all nine of the plaintiff's claims and affirm the judgment of the trial court.

IFACTS AND PROCEDURAL HISTORY

APrevious Appeal

As this court noted in Lynch I, “[t]he parties were married in 1992, and two children were born of the marriage.¹ On September 14, 2009,² the court rendered judgment dissolving the marriage on the ground of irretrievable breakdown.” (Footnotes altered.) Id., at 42, 43 A.3d 667. Part of the dissolution judgment involved the court's decision to grant the defendant's February 4, 2009 pendente lite motion to modify the parties' December 11, 2008 stipulation that they would equally divide the payment of the household expenses.³ Id., at 43, 43 A.3d 667. The defendant's motion alleged that the plaintiff's income had increased and, therefore, asked the court to increase, in turn, the plaintiff's payment obligation. Id. The court accordingly “ordered the plaintiff to pay 60 percent and the defendant to pay 40 percent of the obligations set forth in the stipulation”; id.; from February 4, 2009, to the date of the sale and transfer of the marital home.⁴ Also among the financial orders entered by the court were an alimony award of $200 per week and a child support award of $135 per week, both to be paid by the plaintiff to the defendant. Id.

The plaintiff appealed from these orders and filed four subsequent amended appeals to challenge certain of the court's postjudgment rulings as well, one of which awarded $7500 in appellate attorney's fees to the defendant. Id., at 44, 43 A.3d 667. We reversed that part of the dissolution judgment that ordered the plaintiff to pay to the defendant 30 percent of the value of his unsold books on the ground that the court impermissibly considered the plaintiff's intellectual property twice for alimony and property distribution purposes. Id., at 52–53, 43 A.3d 667. We then reversed almost all of the remaining financial orders⁵ in accordance with the principle that “[t]he [financial] orders [in a domestic relations matter] are interwoven and constitute a carefully crafted mosaic [and] [w]hen we disrupt a single tile in this mosaic, we place in doubt the propriety of other financial orders that the trial court may have deemed equitable in relation to the entire distribution scheme.” (Internal quotation marks omitted.) Id., at 54, 43 A.3d 667. We affirmed the court's decision to grant the defendant's motion for modification, but it did so only with respect to the period of time between February 4 and September 14, 2009. Id., at 46–48, 43 A.3d 667.

Also relevant to this appeal is our conclusion in Lynch I that the “court improperly failed to address [the plaintiff's] January 29, 2009 pendente lite motion for contempt,” in which he alleged that the defendant had failed to reimburse him for household expenses that he had paid in full, even though they were subject to the 2008 stipulation. Id., at 49, 43 A.3d 667. “At trial, the defendant testified that she believed she owed the plaintiff some money, but that she did not know how much because she had no documentation to show exactly what he had paid toward the expenses at issue in the stipulation.” Id. The court nonetheless failed to address this conceded arrearage, even though it granted the defendant's motion for modification. Id. We concluded that the court's omission constituted an impermissible retroactive modification of the stipulation under General Statutes § 46b–86 and a violation of the plaintiff's vested property right in the arrearage. Id., at 50, 43 A.3d 667. Therefore, in remanding the matter for reconsideration of the financial orders, we also ordered that the court determine “the amount of the pendente lite arrearage to be included in the judgment, along with an appropriate order for its payment.” Id., at 51, 43 A.3d 667.

The rescript in Lynch I provided: “The judgment is reversed as to the financial orders only, except with respect to the portion of the court's order granting the defendant's February 4, 2009 pendente lite motion for modification that applies retroactively from February 4, 2009, until the date of judgment, which is affirmed, and the case is remanded for further proceedings in accordance with this opinion.” Id., at 58, 43 A.3d 667.

B

Present Appeal

Trial Court's Memorandum of Decision on Remand

The court heard the present matter on remand over five days between October 2 and October 19, 2012, and it filed its memorandum of decision on December 13, 2012. It found in relevant part: “The plaintiff's employment has been, and continues to be, in computer research relating to genealogical study. He had worked for various companies over the years, but has been self-employed since March, 2003, when he started Mattatuck Consulting, LLC. It was his testimony that his last job prior to that date was severely hampered by his inability to be able to relocate to Utah to please his employer. Additional job opportunities required him to relocate as well. Those were not pursued. That was because, according to the plaintiff, the defendant refused to move out of Connecticut. She [did] not dispute the fact that she was not willing to relocate.

“His consulting business has been fairly successful, and his income has been a combination of consulting, writing and speaking engagements. In 2008, he authored a book titled ‘Google Your Family Tree.’ That publication enjoyed some success and boosted his income in that year and the next. He testified that the book is now four years old and in the technology field that is ancient. He claim[ed] almost no income from the book at [the time of the remand hearings] although he did admit in cross-examination that the book was ... used as a text in [a] course at Boston University, which resulted in some extra book sales, but that he received no direct or other compensation from the college for the use of the text. He also testified that Mattatuck Consulting, LLC, has no intrinsic value and, other than some computer equipment, it has virtually no assets. Over the years, his self-employment income has ranged from gross earnings of $73,500 with gross income of $37,800 in 2011, to gross earnings of $108,800 with gross income of $64,700 in 2010, and to gross earnings of $150,700 with gross income of $67,600 in 2009. For [2012], he claim[ed] a gross income of almost $45,000 through the end of September with gross earnings of almost $67,600.

“The defendant was unemployed at the time of the trial, having been laid off in January of [2012], but she had been employed for most of the marriage. Her employment has been for a variety of employers, all in the areas of business to business sales. The defendant's earnings ranged from $74,560 in 2009 to $57,800 in 2010, to $71,500 in 2011, and to unemployment [in 2012] in the amount of $525 per week.”

The court refashioned the financial orders on remand in two stages. First, it crafted the orders in accordance with our directions in Lynch I and the facts as they were at the time of the dissolution. It then modified those orders in accordance with the motions for modification that it asked both parties to file during the remand hearings, in order to account for the changes in circumstances that had occurred since the time of the dissolution proceedings. The court undertook this approach pursuant to Sunbury v. Sunbury, 216 Conn. 673, 676–77, 583 A.2d 636 (1990), in which our Supreme Court held that a trial court must craft property distribution orders on remand in accordance with the facts as they existed at the time of the dissolution judgment, not at the time of the remand.

a

Financial Orders on Remand

iPlaintiff's January 29, 2009 Motion for Contempt, Regarding Reimbursement for Shared Household Expenses

The court first addressed the plaintiff's January 29, 2009 motion for contempt, which the dissolution court had failed to do. The plaintiff withdrew the...