Straley v. Hosman

• Decision Date: 21 June 1996
• Docket Number: No. 95-4633,95-4633
• Citation: 677 So.2d 24
• Court: Florida District Court of Appeals
• Parties: 21 Fla. L. Weekly D1457 Mark K. STRALEY, Appellant, v. Dale E. HOSMAN and Patsy Lee Hosman, Appellee.

Page 24

677 So.2d 24

21 Fla. L. Weekly D1457

Mark K. STRALEY, Appellant, v. Dale E. HOSMAN and Patsy Lee Hosman, Appellee.

No. 95-4633.

District Court of Appeal of Florida Second District.

June 21, 1996.

Rehearing Denied Aug. 2, 1996.

Raymond A. Alley, Jr., of Raymond A. Alley, Jr., P.A., Tampa, for Appellant and Mark K. Straley, Tampa, Pro se.

Robert D. Gatton, of Broad and Cassel, Orlando, for Appellee.

HARRIS, C.M., Associate Judge.

In this segment of the serialized drama of the dissolution of the marriage of Mark K. Straley and Stacy Frank [see Straley v. Frank, 585 So.2d 334 (Fla. 2d DCA 1991), reversed, 602 So.2d 1278 (Fla.1992), Straley v. Frank, 612 So.2d 610 (Fla. 2d DCA 1992), and Straley v. Frank, 650 So.2d 628 (Fla. 2d DCA 1994) for prior episodes], we are faced with the question as to what effect our previous decisions had on the trial court's award of certain property (the beach property) exclusively to Ms. Frank. Although Ms. Frank is not a named party to this action, it is nevertheless her rights to the beach property that is paramount to our inquiry. This is because the named defendants, Dale E. and Patsy Lee Hosman, candidly admit that they had actual knowledge of the ongoing Straley/Frank litigation at the time they purchased the beach property from Ms. Frank. They, therefore, stand in her shoes insofar as their rights are concerned.

Some review of the history of this controversy is required. In Straley I, we were faced with a final judgment that gave most of the assets, including specifically the beach property, to Ms. Frank and all of the marital liabilities to Mr. Straley. Although we were critical of the distribution to Ms. Frank as being "inequitable," our only specific holding as to the beach property was to reverse the trial court's denial of Mr. Straley's claim to a special equity based on his premarital down payment because "[t]here was no evidence of a gift of this equity to Frank." On appeal, the supreme court disabused us of this view, holding that the previous burden imposed by Ball v. Ball, 335 So.2d 5 (Fla.1976), in proving whether a gift had been intended, had been legislatively shifted 180 degrees. See Frank v. Straley, 602 So.2d 1278 (Fla.1992).

Thereafter, on remand (Straley II ), we affirmed that portion of the final judgment denying a special equity to Mr. Straley in the beach property and the Evtide boat. We then "reversed and remanded" the cause back to the trial court to enter a judgment "consistent" with our opinion.

Back in the trial court, the judge determined that the original final judgment should remain in force, except that $44,471.91 should be paid by Ms. Frank to Mr. Straley "in order to achieve an equal and equitable distribution of the marital assets and liabilities in this case." This payment was to be made in the form of a three-year note. In Straley III, we found the efforts of the trial judge inadequate:

We reversed the judgment below and remanded with directions that the trial court enter a judgment consistent with our opinion--i.e., one which corrected the specified errors. The trial court has declined to do that. Instead, the revised judgment entered by a successor trial judge simply requires Frank to pay Straley the sum of $44,471.00 in the form of a three-year note, leaving the entire interest in the Mako boat in Frank, and leaving Straley alone responsible for the $111,000.00 marital debt.

The figure of $44,471.00 was arrived at by the trial judge by taking the past depreciation of Straley's non-marital partnership interest and deducting therefrom the mortgage reduction attributable to Straley's share. This produced the figure of $89,029.00, which the trial judge concluded was the amount which the marital estate had been overstated in the original judgment. She then roughly divided this figure by two. This approach, of course, does not resolve the inequitable allocation of the marital debt, and still deprives Straley of his one-half interest in the Mako boat.

We then directed the trial judge to award Mr. Straley the amount originally reflected by the note and, in addition, the sum of $44,579.30. The addition of this amount, presumably, would account for the court's failure to properly distribute the Mako boat and divide the marital debts and would finally, in the words of the trial judge, achieve an equal and equitable distribution of the...