Macklin v. Johnson

• Decision Date: 10 February 2022
• Docket Number: s. 18-FM-976 & 18-FM-1153
• Citation: 268 A.3d 1273
• Parties: Brian D. MACKLIN, Appellant, v. Janai T. JOHNSON, Appellee.
• Court: D.C. Court of Appeals

268 A.3d 1273

Brian D. MACKLIN, Appellant,

v.Janai T. JOHNSON, Appellee.

Nos. 18-FM-976 & 18-FM-1153

District of Columbia Court of Appeals.

Argued September 29, 2020

Decided February 10, 2022

Brian D. Macklin, pro se.

Cali Cope-Kasten, with whom Henry J. Brewster, Washington, was on the brief, for appellee.

Before Glickman and Deahl, Associate Judges, and Ruiz, Senior Judge.

Dissenting opinion by Senior Judge Ruiz at page 1288.

Deahl, Associate Judge:

Brian Macklin and Janai Johnson were married for thirteen years and have five children together. Following divorce proceedings, the Superior Court of the District of Columbia ordered that the parties share joint physical and legal custody of their children while granting Ms. Johnson primary custody and final decision-making authority. It also awarded Ms. Johnson a 40% equitable interest in the home the family shared for more than a decade, even though Mr. Macklin purchased it individually three years before the marriage. On appeal, Mr. Macklin challenges the court's custody ruling. He also contends the court erred in granting Ms. Johnson any equitable interest in the home and, in the alternative, that it erred by failing to deduct the pre-marital equity he had accrued in the home before apportioning her interest in it.

On the issue of custody, we see no reversible error. While the facts might have supported a custody arrangement more favorable to Mr. Macklin, the Superior Court carefully scrutinized the record and drew a reasonable conclusion after considering the appropriate factors, so we are bound to uphold its ruling. As to the property distribution, we hold as a matter of first impression that substantial "homemaker" services are a permissible basis for granting a spouse an equitable interest in the other's separately-held real property and detect no error in granting Ms. Johnson an equitable interest in the family home on that basis. Finally, while Mr. Macklin is correct that the trial court was obliged to deduct any pre-marital equity he had in the home before awarding Ms. Johnson an interest in the remainder, the trial court did not contravene that approach. It simply found Mr. Macklin had no pre-marital equity in the home because all of its appreciation occurred during the marriage—rather than beforehand, as Mr. Macklin maintains—and because Mr. Macklin's outstanding mortgage debt on the home exceeded its value at the time the parties married. In short, every bit of equity in the home was marital equity under the trial court's reasoning. That conclusion is adequately supported by the record. We thus affirm the trial court's judgment.

I.

Mr. Macklin purchased his house—later the family home—in February 2002, and he has remained the sole titleholder of the property at all relevant times. The house is located at 55 Quincy Place NW. Shortly after buying it, Mr. Macklin undertook substantial renovations to convert it from a multi-unit to a single-family house. That same year he met Ms. Johnson. At the time, he owned and operated a valet parking business, while she worked as an administrative assistant and waitress. After a year or so of dating, in 2003, they had their first of five children, A.M., and Ms. Johnson moved in with Mr. Macklin shortly thereafter, around January 2004. They had four more children over the next decade: K.M., R.M., C.M., and I.M. The parties married on April 19, 2005.

While Ms. Johnson worked four to five years during the marriage, she spent the bulk of their marriage caring for the children and the household. She would typically do the cooking, cleaning, and laundry, plus she would transport the children to and from school. As marriages sometimes go, theirs hit a rough patch in 2010 and Ms. Johnson began a months-long extramarital affair. She moved out of the family home for a time, but later moved back in and the parties reconciled toward the end of 2010. Ms. Johnson began another affair in 2015, and when Mr. Macklin learned of it, they had an altercation resulting in Mr. Macklin moving out of the home while Ms. Johnson stayed with the children.¹ Several months later, Mr. Macklin returned to the home and Ms. Johnson and the children moved out.

Both parties filed for divorce in late 2016. Following a six-day bench trial, the Superior Court granted the parties’ mutual request for an absolute divorce. The court ordered joint physical and legal custody of the children while granting Ms. Johnson primary custody and final decision-making authority over them. By the order's terms, the children would spend every other weekend with Mr. Macklin—from Thursday afternoon to Monday morning—with two caveats. A.M. requested additional time with his father, which the court granted by extending the every-other-weekend visits to Tuesday morning in his case. K.M., on the other hand, had a strained relationship with her father and did not want to spend weekends with him, so the court did not order her to do so. It did, at Mr. Macklin's request, order that her visitation "take place in the context of family therapy."

The court also awarded Ms. Johnson a 40% equitable interest in the home. In calculating that amount, the court took the home's market value at the time of divorce ($784,000) and deducted the existing mortgage on the property ($227,000), as well as the estimated sales costs (6% of $784,000, or $47,040), arriving at a "cash-out" value of $509,960. It then awarded Ms. Johnson 40% of this figure, or $203,984. The Court explained that it credited Ms. Johnson's expert's testimony that "essentially all of the appreciation" in the home "occurred during the marriage." That is because the mortgage balance ($227,000) was greater than the price Mr. Macklin had paid for the home in 2002 ($225,000), which—based on the record—was the apparent value of the home when the parties married. In other words, all of the equity in the home accrued during the marriage and, in fact, Mr. Macklin owed about $2,000 more on his mortgage than what the home was worth at the time the parties married.

Mr. Macklin now brings this timely appeal.

II.

We first examine the child custody ruling. Mr. Macklin argued at trial that an equally shared schedule would best serve the children's interest, which is of paramount concern when fashioning custody arrangements. See D.C. Code § 16-914(a)(1)(A) (2012 Repl.). But the trial court, while ordering that the parties share joint legal and physical custody of the children,² agreed with Ms. Johnson that the children were best off with her as the primary physical custodian, granting Mr. Macklin the limited visitation rights outlined above. Mr. Macklin challenges this ruling on two grounds. First, he contends that "50/50 custody is presumed in cases with no abuse," and that the Superior Court failed to heed that purported presumption. Second, he asserts that the court abused its discretion in awarding Ms. Johnson primary physical custody because "the findings of the court do not match the facts of this case." We review these arguments in turn and conclude that neither merits reversal.

A.

Mr. Macklin first alleges the trial court erroneously diverged from a presumption of equal custody. We review such challenges to a trial court's application of legal standards de novo . See In re T.H. , 898 A.2d 908, 911 (D.C. 2006). Mr. Macklin's argument fails because it rests on a misunderstanding of the controlling law. Equal custody is not the "presumed" arrangement in the District in the absence of domestic abuse, as Mr. Macklin asserts. Rather, joint custody is presumptively in the children's best interests in the absence of one or more intra-family offenses.³ See D.C. Code § 16-914(a)(2). And, contrary to Mr. Macklin's position, joint custody is not synonymous with equal, or "50/50," custody.

We made this clear in Estopina v. O'Brian , 68 A.3d 790 (D.C. 2013), where we explained that a "custody arrangement constitutes ‘joint physical custody’ so long as it involves some sort of shared custody, such as primary physical custody awarded to one parent and visitation rights to another." Id. at 792 ; see also Hutchins v. Compton , 917 A.2d 680, 682 (D.C. 2007) ("Joint physical custody may, but need not, be on a 50/50 basis.") (cleaned up). As in Estopina , the trial court's custody order granting the parties shared custody, while awarding one parent primary physical custody and the other visitation, satisfies § 16-914(a)(2) ’s definition of "joint custody." The trial court thus did not fail to honor the presumption in favor of joint custody. That is exactly what it awarded.

B.

Mr. Macklin next argues that the trial court's custody determination, and its factual findings, are not supported by the record. We accord "great deference" to a trial court's child custody determinations, Prost v. Greene , 652 A.2d 621, 626 (D.C. 1995), which reach this court "with a presumption of correctness." In re C.T. , 724 A.2d 590, 597 (D.C. 1999). We review the trial court's findings of fact for clear error, In re A.C.G. , 894 A.2d 436, 439 (D.C. 2006), and will "reverse a trial court's custody decision only upon a finding of an abuse of discretion," Estopina , 68 A.3d at 793. In applying these standards, we first look to whether the trial court considered "all relevant factors and no improper factor," and then we "evaluate whether the decision is supported by substantial reasoning ... drawn from a firm factual foundation in the record." In re A.M. , 589 A.2d 1252, 1257-58 (D.C. 1991) (internal quotation marks omitted). That the record might have supported a different outcome is no basis for upending the trial court's decision. Prost , 652 A.2d at 626.

In this matter, the trial court weighed all appropriate factors without considering any inappropriate one. Indeed, the court carefully walked through all seventeen factors necessary to determining the children's best interests under D.C. Code § 16-914(a)(3). Three factors in particular animated the court's physical custody decision:

(A)

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