Cooke v. Cooke
This text of 126 So. 2d 160 (Cooke v. Cooke) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering District Court of Appeal of Florida primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.
Opinion
The plaintiff, Nell Mills Cooke, who is appellant here, filed her complaint for divorce charging the defendant, Melvin Ott Cooke, with extreme cruelty and prayed for an accounting of the property which the parties had accumulated during the course of the marriage. The final decree finds that the equities are with the plaintiff and grants her a decree of divorce. With this portion of the final decree the appellant has no quarrel..
The first point presented by the appellant challenges the correctness of that portion of the decree which determined the equity in the properties which had been accumulated. We have reviewed the record in the light of the assignments of error and the argument in the brief and we find that the appellant has not demonstrated that the property provisions of the final decree are against the manifest weight of the evidence before the chancellor.
The second point urges that the court committed error in that it did not order an accounting by the husband of income received by him during the time from the filing of the suit to the day of the final decree from property which was in the plaintiff’s name and from property in which plaintiff was subsequently found to have a special equity. There is substantial evidence that the parties had jointly enjoyed the income from all of the accumulated property and that certain of the payments made by the husband to the wife during the pendency of the cause were properly construed by the chancellor to be in lieu of her claim for a strict accounting of income received from assets in her own name and in which she had a special equity. We therefore decline to reverse the decree because of the chancellor’s failure to require a strict accounting.
It is with the third point presented by the appellant-wife that we are primarily concerned. The point is as follows:
[162]*162“Whether or not a property settlement agreement made by the parties and their counsel in open court and dictated into the record at final hearing is enforceable”. The record reveals that at the final hearing, after the plaintiff proved her grounds for divorce, the parties dictated into the record certain terms and conditions of a property settlement agreement. The attorney for the wife announced that the agreement had been arrived at immediately prior to the taking of testimony.1
When the parties were unable to come forward with a written agreement the trial court heard further testimony upon their respective claims as to property matters and entered the decree appealed.
The appellant urges that Rule 1.5(d), Florida Rules of Civil Procedure, 30 F.S.A.,2 requires the chancellor to recognize the terms of a parole property settlement which are dictated into the record.
It is unnecessary to determine whether the appellant is correct upon the general proposition, because the procedure in this case would not come within it. The trial judge qualified his acceptance of the proposed stipulation by his requirement that it be particularized and reduced to writing. Such a requirement surely cannot be held to be an abuse of discretion, in view of Mrs. Cooke’s indefiniteness as tó her understanding of the matter and the very sketchy nature of the proposed agreement. Cf. Pine[163]*163apple Orange Co. v. Travelers’ Ins. Co., 104 Fla. 600, 140 So. 471.
Affirmed.
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126 So. 2d 160, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/cooke-v-cooke-fladistctapp-1961.