Almquist v. Almquist

522 P.2d 383, 214 Kan. 788, 1974 Kan. LEXIS 403
CourtSupreme Court of Kansas
DecidedMay 11, 1974
Docket47,285
StatusPublished
Cited by21 cases

This text of 522 P.2d 383 (Almquist v. Almquist) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Supreme Court of Kansas primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Almquist v. Almquist, 522 P.2d 383, 214 Kan. 788, 1974 Kan. LEXIS 403 (kan 1974).

Opinions

The opinion of the court was delivered by

Foth, C.:

In this divorce action we are concerned primarily with the division of property ordered by the trial court. The plaintiff wife was granted a divorce on the grounds of incompatibility on October 4, 1972. Further hearings were held on the property aspect of the suit, and on January 29, 1973, the court entered its order: of a net marital estate of $176,707.86 the court awarded the husband $143,581.61 and the wife. $33,126.25. She appeals.

The parties were married in 1936, when she was nineteen and he twenty. Neither brought any property to the marriage, but they set up housekeeping at the edge of Assaria, Kansas in a house belonging to Kenneth’s parents. It was located on 76M acres which over the years formed the core of his farming operation. Some seventeen years later, in 1953, the senior Almquists deeded the property to their son; the parties continued to reside there for almost twenty years more. During the marriage the Almquists raised four children, who by 1972 were all grown, married, and living away from the family home.

At the time of the divorce Kenneth Almquist was 57 years old, Eileen 55. He, in addition to farming, had for some time held a federal civil service job at Schilling Manor, near Salina. He did maintenance work, specializing in electrical wiring, and earned around $9,000 a year. She had helped with the farm work, and in recent years had tried her hand at a series of unskilled jobs, earning at most $1.00 per hour. Her current venture was in the real estate business, where she was a licensed salesperson with a Salina agency. She supplemented her uncertain income from this source by cooking evening meals for a Salina family and noon meals for a Salina doctor. Her culinary skills brought in $39 a week; her real estate activities had grossed $50 in the sixty days before trial.

Mrs. Almquist nevertheless declined alimony, saying “I think I can make a go of it in my real estate. I’m going to try if I can. I would just as soon have this considered anyway into the property settlement.”

The property division, with agreed values, went like this:

To Kenneth Almquist:
[790]*790Corporate stock............................ $3,250.00
Cattle, farm machinery, crops................ 45,650.00
Car, cash, guns ............................ 1,328.00
Life insurance, retirement fund............... 6,356.00
- 56,584.00
The home place............................ 45,500.00
Interest in mothers estate................... 70,349.00
-115,849.00
172,433.00
Less, judgment to Eileen..............................(28,250.00)
144,183.00
To Eileen Almquist:
158.25 Corporate stock...........
1.501.00 Cattle ...................
3.217.00 Car, cash, household goods .
- 4,876.25
....... 28,250.00 Plus, judgment from Kenneth
33,126.25

In addition, Kenneth was ordered to pay the family debts of $601.29 and $1,395.00 to apply on her attorney fees (he had paid $200 in a prior abortive proceeding). Of the “equalizing” judgment of $28,250, he was to pay $1,250 at once to defray her cost of moving from the family home and to “assist her in making adjustments occasioned by the move.” The $27,000 balance was to be paid $15,000 on March 31, 1973, and $4,000 annually on March 31st thereafter until paid in full.

The record reflects no articulated reasons behind the trial court’s decision, but we may glean some of the judge’s thinking by examining the result he reached. The wife was awarded five cows, three calves and three shares of A. T. & T. stock, all purchased by her from her own earnings. She also received her savings account, her life insurance, one of the parties’ two cars, and the household goods. The husband was awarded the property incidental to his farming operations, his insurance, his retirement fund, his guns. He, too, received a car, and corporate stock which had originated in gifts from his parents. Thus each received, by and large, the items having some personal attachment or which he or she was accustomed to using.

The key items omitted in the foregoing summary are the home place and Kenneth’s inheritance, having a total value of $115,849. [791]*791Apart from these two items Kenneth received $56,584 in jointly accumulated property, against which he was to pay $28,250, or just about one-half, in cash. If this were all, Mrs. Almquist would obviously have little ground for complaint.

This, of course, is not all. Mrs. Almquist’s chief complaint goes to the fact that in making the property division the trial court apparently first set aside to her husband the home place and his interest in his mothers estate, and apportioned only the balance. In so doing, she says, the trial court abused its discretion.

The rules applicable to our review in such a oase are easy to state but difficult to apply. “The district court is vested with wide discretion in adjusting the financial obligations of the parties in a divorce action and its exercise of that discretion will not be disturbed on appeal in the absence of a showing of clear abuse.” (Stayton v. Stayton, 211 Kan. 560, 506 P. 2d 1172, Syl. ¶ 1.) One seeking to establish an abuse of discretion assumes a heavy burden, for “If reasonable men could differ as to the propriety of the action taken by the trial court then it cannot be said that the trial court abused its discretion.” (Id., p. 562.) On the other hand, “The discretion vested in the trial court must be exercised in whole-hearted good faith and be guided by the statutes, not by the court’s private opinion of what the statute ought to be. Where the exercise of discretion is arbitrary and not judicial, and the judgment is inequitable, it will be set aside.” (St. Clair v. St. Clair, 211 Kan. 468, 507 P. 2d 206, Syl. ¶ 6.)

The governing statute, referred to in St. Clair, is K. S. A. 60-1610 (b) (as amended):

“The decree shall divide the real and personal property of the parties, whether owned by either spouse prior to marriage, acquired by either spouse in his or her own right after marriage, or acquired by their joint efforts, in a just and reasonable manner, either by a division of the property in kind, or by setting the same or a part thereof over to one of the spouses and requiring either to pay such sum as may be just and proper, or by ordering a sale of the same under such conditions as the court may prescribe and dividing the proceeds of such sale.”

We commented on the changes in our divorce law wrought by the 1963 enactment of that statute in Zeller v. Zeller, 195 Kan. 452, 407 P. 2d 478:

“The significant change in the law regarding division of property is that the court is no longer required to set aside to the wife the separate property which she brought to the marriage or acquired with her own funds after the marriage. [792]

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Almquist v. Almquist
522 P.2d 383 (Supreme Court of Kansas, 1974)

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Bluebook (online)
522 P.2d 383, 214 Kan. 788, 1974 Kan. LEXIS 403, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/almquist-v-almquist-kan-1974.