Carlos E. Clark v. Jacqueline Clark

• Court: District Court of Appeal of Florida
• Decided: January 15, 2025
• Docket: 3D2024-0046
• Status: Published

Opinion

Third District Court of Appeal State of Florida

Opinion filed January 15, 2025. Not final until disposition of timely filed motion for rehearing.

________________

No. 3D24-0046 Lower Tribunal No. 05-18963 ________________

Carlos E. Clark, Appellant,

vs.

Jacqueline Clark, et al., Appellees.

An Appeal from a nonfinal order from the Circuit Court for Miami-Dade County, Marlene Fernandez-Karavetsos, Judge.

Law Office of Michael Garcia Petit, P.A., and Michael Garcia Petit (Miramar), for appellant.

Estefano Law, P.A., and Delaila J. Estefano, for appellees.

Before EMAS, FERNANDEZ, and MILLER, JJ.

MILLER, J. In this intrafamily dispute, the former husband challenges a nonfinal

order granting intervention and requiring him to transfer his interest in the

former marital residence to his son after the trial court imposed a constructive

trust over the property. On appeal, he contends the trial court misconstrued

the terms of the negotiated final judgment that served as the basis for the

ruling below. We are not so persuaded.

Although the underlying agreement is far from a model of clarity, we

conclude the former husband plainly waived any right to equitable

distribution by stipulating he would place all funds to which he was otherwise

entitled—including fifty percent of the proceeds garnered from the future sale

of the marital residence—in trust for the benefit of his then nine-year-old son.

See Rose v. Steigleman, 32 So. 3d 644, 645 (Fla. 1st DCA 2010) (“A trial

court’s interpretation of a contract is a matter of law and is thus subject to de

novo review.”); see also Lab’y Corp. of Am. v. Davis, 339 So. 3d 318, 324

(Fla. 2022) (“Under the whole-text canon, proper interpretation requires

consideration of ‘the entire text, in view of its structure and of the physical

and logical relation of its many parts.’”) (citing Antonin Scalia & Bryan A.

Garner, Reading Law: The Interpretation of Legal Texts 167 (2012)); F.H.

Paschen, S.N. Nielsen & Assocs. LLC v. B&B Site Dev., Inc., 311 So. 3d 39,

44 (Fla. 4th DCA 2021) (“A contract should be read as a whole.”); EcoVirux,

2 LLC v. BioPledge, LLC, 357 So. 3d 182, 186 (Fla. 3d DCA 2022) (“[W]ords

and phrases in a contract cannot be considered in isolation.”). Upon

reaching the age of majority, the son was to receive the funds outright, as

the trust was designed to automatically terminate.

Because there is no legal prohibition on this type of arrangement and

the former husband failed to fulfill his obligation to establish and fund the

trust, imposing a constructive trust over fifty percent of the marital residence

for the son’s benefit was proper under guiding authority. See Zanakis v.

Zanakis, 629 So. 2d 181, 183 (Fla. 4th DCA 1993) (“[Appellant] relied on her

son . . . to hold title to this property for the benefit of [his brother] after

[appellant]’s death. [The son], while acknowledging that it was never

intended he should own the property, abused the confidence placed in him

by [appellant] by conveying it to his live-in girlfriend, [the brother]’s widow,

whom he then married, thereby unjustly enriching himself. Although the trial

court may have mislabeled the trust as a resulting trust instead of a

constructive trust, he correctly imposed a trust.”); Saporta v. Saporta, 766

So. 2d 379, 381 (Fla. 3d DCA 2000) (reversing trial court for not imposing

constructive trust based on husband’s implied promise property would be

family home); Brown v. Poole, 261 So. 3d 708, 710 (Fla. 5th DCA 2018)

(finding trial court properly imposed constructive trust on life insurance

3 proceeds where former husband agreed to designate former wife as

beneficiary in alimony obligations); Browning v. Browning, 784 So. 2d 1145,

1147-48 (Fla. 2d DCA 2001) (imposing constructive trust where former

husband failed to provide life insurance for son’s benefit as required by final

judgment); Holmes ex rel. Holmes v. Holmes, 463 So. 2d 578, 580 (Fla. 1st

DCA 1985) (finding father’s failure to provide life insurance for his minor

child’s benefit, as required by final judgment and stipulated agreement, was

abuse of confidence or mistake necessitating constructive trust).

Accordingly, we impute no error to the nonfinal order under review, and we

affirm in all respects.

Affirmed.