Van Dyke v. Steinle
| Decision Date | 28 March 1995 |
| Docket Number | CA-CV,No. 1,1 |
| Citation | 183 Ariz. 268,902 P.2d 1372 |
| Parties | Charles Steinle VAN DYKE, (f/k/a Charles L. Steinle), Petitioner-Appellee, v. Aimee Frederick STEINLE, Respondent-Appellant. 93-0492. |
| Court | Arizona Court of Appeals |
Appellant Aimee Frederick Steinle (wife) appeals from an order terminating her spousal maintenance from appellee Charles Steinle Van Dyke (husband) after the trial court found substantial and continuing changed circumstances arising from wife's cohabitation with her fiance, Jay Galvin. We conclude that the evidence did not support termination of wife's spousal maintenance, but we remand for the trial court's factual determination of whether certain evidence apparent on this record would support a reduction in spousal maintenance. 1
In August 1991, a decree of dissolution terminated the parties' marriage. 2 Wife was awarded spousal maintenance under the following terms:
IT IS ORDERED awarding to Wife for a period of three years, commencing June 1, 1991, the sum of $13,000 per month in spousal maintenance or until the sale of the residence awarded to Wife, whichever event first occurs. In the event of a sale of the residence, Wife shall receive as spousal maintenance, commencing on the first day of the month following the closing, the sum of $8,000 per month for the balance of the three year period. Said payments shall be made directly to Wife so long as they are timely made.
On February 19, 1993, husband filed a petition to modify spousal maintenance, alleging that wife's support should be terminated, or in the alternative, reduced, for four reasons: (1) wife had remarried in December 1992; (2) if wife had not remarried, her income had substantially increased to an amount alleged to exceed $4,000 per month; (3) the decree contemplated the sale of the residence awarded to wife but wife had failed even to list the property for sale, thus continuing her high mortgage payments and corresponding higher spousal maintenance beyond the period anticipated by the decree; and (4) wife's involvement in a continuous and long-standing cohabitation relationship had substantially reduced her living expenses and support needs. Husband stipulated that his ability to pay spousal maintenance was not at issue in the modification proceedings.
At a hearing on the petition, the following facts were evidenced. Approximately six months after the decree was entered, wife's fiance, Jay Galvin, began living with wife and her two children at wife's residence. In August 1992, wife and Galvin informed husband that they were planning to marry on December 5, 1992, in San Francisco. However, in early October 1992, wife discovered that remarriage might terminate her spousal maintenance, and, because she felt she could not afford to lose that income at that time, she cancelled the wedding ceremony.
Because many of the invited wedding guests had made travel plans that could not be changed, wife and Galvin decided to have a party on December 5 in San Francisco in place of the planned post-wedding reception. Additionally, because they had made nonrefundable honeymoon arrangements, wife and Galvin took their planned trip to Anguilla after the party.
Husband believed a wedding had taken place and prorated the December 1992 spousal maintenance payment accordingly, which wife returned with a message indicating she had not remarried on December 5. On the advice of his attorney, husband paid wife's $13,000 spousal maintenance for December 1992, but did not pay the January and February 1993 payments; instead, he filed his petition for modification with the court.
At the modification hearing, wife testified that she was currently president and director of Elite Solutions, Inc. (ESI), a custom plastics molding company recently started and owned by Galvin, where she did part-time clerical work, including writing checks and handling receivables, and had just started in sales. She did not consider herself an employee of ESI, and received no salary. Rather, she considered her work there to be "schooling," comparable to an internship or apprenticeship in which she would learn the business. Wife and Galvin had orally agreed that she would receive a 50 percent ownership interest in ESI when she and Galvin married or in August 1994, whichever first occurred. No evidence was introduced of ESI's current net worth, but wife testified that it had operated at a net loss during the last two fiscal years.
Beginning in June 1992, ESI had paid some of wife's household expenses including electric, gas, water, telephone, pool service, one-half of the yard service and one-half of household cleaning expenses. Wife testified that these amounts were advanced to her because of husband's delay in sending maintenance payments while he was hospitalized, and that she later reimbursed ESI. She also admitted having access to both ESI's and Galvin's credit cards to use for personal expenses, which she expected to repay from her own funds. Wife provided documentation that ESI had paid $3,745.44 for her utilities and that she had charged additional personal expenses of $2,351.08 on the ESI credit card. As reimbursement, however, wife had paid an ESI credit card bill of $6,820 from her own funds when the company had an inadequate cash flow; offsetting that payment against the amount of her utilities and credit card charges paid by ESI, wife computed that ESI owed her money at the time of the hearing.
Wife admitted that ESI also provided her with child care services by one of its employees, valued at $400 per month, and that ESI also paid wife's business travel expenses of approximately $100 per month. Wife further testified that ESI had not been able to pay Galvin a salary, but paid his expenses and reimbursed him for loans he had made to the company.
Galvin did not pay any rent "or anything else" for living at wife's home; she did not believe this was "unfair," because she liked having him there, and because the house was titled solely in her name. She testified that she had not incurred any additional expenses as the result of his living there, and that his financial contribution to the household was limited to occasionally buying groceries. When asked what benefits she received from Galvin's living at the house, wife responded, "Oh, he does a lot of maintenance around the house that would normally cost a lot of money to have done."
Although Galvin did not pay household expenses, wife admitted he had paid for the majority of their travel, which included two trips to Mexico, a Disney World cruise, and the trip to Anguilla. He had also purchased a substantial amount of jewelry for wife and her children in 1992, including a $13,000 engagement ring.
At the time of the dissolution, wife's 7,400 square-foot house was valued at approximately $900,000. Wife testified that she did not list the house for sale immediately after the decree was entered because realtors advised her that the market for luxury homes was "soft" at that time, and that she should wait a year. After receiving a call in September 1992 from her realtor advising that the market had improved, wife placed the residence on the market for sale in October 1992 with a listing price of $1.7 million. Since the listing, she felt that activity on the house had been good, and she testified she had shown the home to potential buyers eight times in the week prior to the hearing.
Although her mortgage payment on the house at the time of the decree was approximately $6,200, wife testified that, at the time of the hearing, it had been reduced by about $1,500 per month, to $4,675 until May 1993, when it was expected to stabilize at $5,200 because she had converted from a variable to a fixed rate mortgage. Other expenses on the house, however, had increased because of the expiration of a home warranty since the decree; wife testified she had fixed settling cracks, repainted, and replaced a compressor, hot water heater and pool heater, in addition to incurring expenses in preparing to sell the house.
Husband argued at the hearing that, although he had stipulated that his ability to pay spousal maintenance was not at issue, he believed wife's spousal maintenance should be terminated on a theory of "marriage by estoppel," because he had detrimentally relied on her planned wedding on December 5, 1992, and had taken his current family on "a rather lavish vacation" to Spain, hired a new employee, bought office equipment, and incurred $20,000 in additional debt, in anticipation of the end of his obligation to pay spousal maintenance to wife. Husband admitted that he was aware of wife's "dating" relationship with Galvin at the time of the decree, and admitted that wife would be paying the same household expenses and utilities even if Galvin were not living there; nonetheless, husband believed that Galvin's noncontribution to wife's living expenses was "unfair."
After the evidentiary hearing, the court issued its order terminating spousal maintenance for several reasons. First, the court found that for the past year and a half wife had been living with Galvin in wife's former marital residence in a relationship that was similar to a marriage in all respects except for a marriage license. Second, the court found that the residence had not been sold as anticipated by the dissolution decree, and that it had been placed on the market at substantially above the appraised price. Third, after finding that the intent of the decree's award of temporary maintenance for a three-year period was to enable the wife to achieve financial independence with her reasonable effort, the court reasoned:
Although the "family" established by...
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Priessman v. Priessman, 2 CA–CV 2011–0071.
...award.4 We review a trial court's ruling on a petition for modification for an abuse of discretion. Van Dyke v. Steinle, 183 Ariz. 268, 273, 902 P.2d 1372, 1377 (App.1995). But we review issues of statutory interpretation de novo. Hobson v. Mid–Century Ins. Co., 199 Ariz. 525, ¶ 6, 19 P.3d ......
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