In Re Marriage of Brown

469 N.E.2d 612, 127 Ill. App. 3d 831, 83 Ill. Dec. 5, 1984 Ill. App. LEXIS 2353
CourtAppellate Court of Illinois
DecidedAugust 16, 1984
Docket5-83-0808
StatusPublished
Cited by10 cases

This text of 469 N.E.2d 612 (In Re Marriage of Brown) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Appellate Court of Illinois primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
In Re Marriage of Brown, 469 N.E.2d 612, 127 Ill. App. 3d 831, 83 Ill. Dec. 5, 1984 Ill. App. LEXIS 2353 (Ill. Ct. App. 1984).

Opinion

JUSTICE HARRISON

delivered the opinion of the court:

Frances Brown, petitioner, and Michael Brown, respondent, were married in 1964, and their marriage was dissolved by a judgment entered in the circuit court of White County on December 10, 1980. Following entry of the judgment of dissolution, petitioner appealed to this court, and respondent cross-appealed. (In re Marriage of Brown (1982), 110 Ill. App. 3d 782, 443 N.E.2d 11.) We reversed the judgment and remanded for a new hearing on the issues of property division, maintenance and child support, finding that the trial court had erred in classifying respondent’s one-half interest in Brown’s Feed and Chemical Store, a partnership between respondent and his father, as nonmarital property. (110 Ill. App. 3d 782, 784-87.) We also found that the court had undervalued respondent’s interest in the partnership by $57,071. (110 Ill. App. 3d 782, 787-88.) On remand, in a judgment entered on November 2, 1983, the trial court awarded petitioner an additional cash sum of $28,535.50, exactly one-half the amount by which the respondent’s interest in the feed store had been undervalued in the original judgment. The court also awarded petitioner an additional three years’ maintenance at $500 per month, and $5,000 as additional attorney fees. The remainder of the judgment was not changed. Petitioner now appeals from this second judgment.

Our evaluation of the judgment on remand must be preceded by a determination of whether the trial court was obligated to consider the effect of certain amendments made to section 503 of the Illinois Marriage and Dissolution of Marriage Act (Ill. Rev. Stat. 1981, ch. 40, par. 503) between the date of our original mandate and the date on which the second judgment was entered. In our original opinion, we held, citing In re Marriage of Smith (1981), 86 Ill. 2d 518, 427 N.E.2d 1239, and In re Marriage of Lee (1981), 87 Ill. 2d 64, 430 N.E.2d 1030, that respondent’s interest in Brown’s Feed and Chemical Store, while originally nonmarital, was transmuted into marital property by the partnership’s retention of earnings made by respondent during the marriage and classifiable as marital property. (In re Marriage of Brown (1982), 110 Ill. App. 3d 782, 785-86.) In so holding, we relied specifically on that portion of Smith in which our supreme court indicated that “where a spouse who holds nonmarital property causes it to be commingled with marital property, or with nonmarital property of the other, we hold that the commingled property is presumed to be marital property.” (In re Marriage of Smith (1981), 86 Ill. 2d 518, 529, 427 N.E.2d 1239.) Our opinion was filed on December 3, 1982, and our mandate issued on January 13,1983.

On August 19, 1983, between the issuance of our mandate and the entry of the trial court’s judgment on remand, the General Assembly enacted Public Act 83-129. The section of that act pertinent here amended Section 503(c) of the Illinois Marriage and Dissolution of Marriage Act. The amended section states:

“(c) Commingled marital and non-marital property shall be treated in the following manner, unless otherwise agreed by the spouses:
(1) When marital and non-marital property are commingled by contributing one estate of property into another resulting in a loss of identity of the contributed property, the classification of the contributed property is transmuted to the estate receiving the contribution, subject to the provisions of paragraph (2) of this subsection; provided that if marital and non-marital property are commingled into newly acquired property resulting in a loss of identity of the contributing estates, the commingled property shall be deemed transmuted to marital property, subject to the provisions of paragraph (2) of this subsection.
(2) When one estate of property makes a contribution to another estate of property, or when a spouse contributes personal effort to non-marital property, the contributing estate shall be reimbursed from the estate receiving the contribution notwithstanding any transmutation; provided, that no such reimbursement shall be made with respect to a contribution which is not retraceable by clear and convincing evidence, or was a gift, or, in the case of a contribution of personal effort of a spouse to non-marital property, unless the effort is significant and results in substantial appreciation of the non-marital property. Personal effort of a spouse shall be deemed a contribution by the marital estate. The court may provide for reimbursement out of the marital property to be divided or by imposing a lien against the non-marital property which received the contribution.” Ill. Rev. Stat. 1983, ch. 40, par. 503(c).

There can be little doubt but that Public Act 83—129 constitutes a legislative rejection of the rationale of In re Marriage of Smith (1981), 86 Ill. 2d 518, 427 N.E.2d 1239, and In re Marriage of Lee (1981), 87 Ill. 2d 64, 430 N.E.2d 1030, the cases relied on in our original opinion. (See generally Feldman & Fleck, Taming Transmutation: A Guide to Illinois’ New Rules on Property Classification and Division upon Dissolution of Marriage, 72 Ill. B.J. 336 (1984).) We believe, however, that Public Act 83—129 does not apply to the case at bar. In In re Marriage of Carney (1984), 122 Ill. App. 3d 705, 462 N.E.2d 596, the court, in reversing and remanding a judgment entered by the trial court prior to the effective date of Public Act 83—129, instructed the trial court to apply on remand the law as it existed at the time the original judgment was entered, notwithstanding that the appellate court opinion was filed and the new hearing would be held after August 19, 1983, the effective date of the amendments. (122 Ill. App. 3d 705, 714-15.) In support of its holding, the court in Carney relied on In re Marriage of Sweet (1983), 119 Ill. App. 3d 1033, 458 N.E.2d 14, in which the court used the guidelines set forth in section 801(d) of the Illinois Marriage and Dissolution of Marriage Act to determine whether an amendment to that act should be applied to the new hearings ordered by the court:

“Section 801(d) of the Act (Ill. Rev. Stat. 1981, ch. 40, par. 801(d)) provides that ’[i]n any action or proceeding in which an appeal was pending or a new trial was ordered prior to the effective date of this Act, the law in effect at the time of the order sustaining the appeal or the new trial governs the appeal, the new trial and any subsequent trial ***.’ Although Section 801(d) is addressed to the Act itself, in our judgment it should be applied to amendments as well.

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Bluebook (online)
469 N.E.2d 612, 127 Ill. App. 3d 831, 83 Ill. Dec. 5, 1984 Ill. App. LEXIS 2353, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/in-re-marriage-of-brown-illappct-1984.