In re Marriage of Majors

• Court: Court of Appeals of Iowa
• Decided: March 5, 2025
• Docket: 24-0636
• Status: Published

Opinion

IN THE COURT OF APPEALS OF IOWA

No. 24-0636 Filed March 5, 2025

IN RE THE MARRIAGE OF MEREDITH RENEE MAJORS AND CHRISTOPHER JAMES MAJORS

Upon the Petition of MEREDITH RENEE MAJORS, Petitioner-Appellant,

And Concerning CHRISTOPHER JAMES MAJORS, Respondent-Appellee,

and

JOHN DAVID HARTUNG, Interested Party-Appellee. ________________________________________________________________

Appeal from the Iowa District Court for Polk County, Karen A. Romano,

Judge.

Meredith Majors appeals the judgment entered on an attorney fee lien that

arose from the proceedings to dissolve her marriage to Christopher Majors.

AFFIRMED.

Jonathon P. Tarpey of Shindler, Anderson, Goplerud & Weese, P.C., West

Des Moines, for appellant.

Amy K. Davis of Miller, Zimmerman & Evans, P.L.C., Des Moines, for

appellee Christopher James Majors.

Suzane L. Woollums of Hartung Schroeder Law Firm, Des Moines, for

appellee John David Hartung.

Heard by Tabor, C.J., and Schumacher and Chicchelly, JJ. 2

CHICCHELLY, Judge.

Meredith Majors appeals the judgment entered on an attorney fee lien that

arose from the proceedings to dissolve her marriage to Christopher Majors. 1 The

district court ordered the lien paid from proceeds held in trust following the sale of

the marital home. Meredith contends the court erred by finding that the homestead

exemption set out in Iowa Code section 561.16 (2024) lien is void against the

proceeds of the sale of the home. Because the homestead exemption does not

apply to dissolution proceedings, we affirm. We decline to award appellate

attorney fees.

I. Background Facts and Proceedings.

This appeal stems from a dispute over attorney fees that Meredith incurred

during proceedings to dissolve her marriage to Christopher. Meredith began those

proceedings in February 2021, and the district court entered the decree dissolving

the marriage in February 2023. The court awarded the marital home to Meredith,

ordering her to refinance the mortgage within sixty days and split the home’s equity

with Christopher.

When Meredith could not refinance the mortgage, Christopher initiated

contempt proceedings. The district court found Meredith in default, directed her to

list the home for sale immediately, and ordered her to pay Christopher one-half of

the proceeds when sold. The home was sold in October 2023, but a dispute then

arose over how to divide the sale proceeds between Meredith and Christopher.

Christopher petitioned for declaratory judgment on the matter. The parties agreed

1 J.D. Hartung, the attorney who filed the lien, appears as an interested party. 3

that Christopher’s attorney would hold the sale proceeds in trust until the court’s

ruling.2

Before the court ruled on how to divide the sale proceeds, J.D. Hartung filed

an attorney fee lien in the amount of $20,147.75 for legal services rendered to

Meredith pending the dissolution. Hartung represented Meredith from March 2021

until she consented to his withdrawal in October 2021. The attorney

representation agreement Meredith signed with Hartung’s law firm required

payment of a $10,000 retainer, all expenses incurred on her behalf, and an hourly

fee for the work performed by Hartung and his staff. She paid with a MasterCard.

The dispute over attorney fees arose when Meredith disputed two payments

to Hartung, totaling $20,147.75. Those funds were debited from the law firm’s

bank account in January 2022 when the credit card transactions were reversed.

The firm contested Meredith’s dispute, and the funds were returned. But Meredith

continued to dispute the charges, and the funds were debited from the account

again in August 2022. The bank appealed on the firm’s behalf. Hartung learned

that MasterCard denied the appeal in November 2023.

Before the declaratory judgment action concluded, Hartung filed the

attorney fee lien on the proceeds from the sale of the marital home under Iowa

Code section 602.10116(3) (providing that an attorney can perfect a lien on money

owed by a client and held by an adverse party in the action in which the attorney

was employed). Meredith moved to void the lien, claiming her share of the

proceeds from the sale of the home are protected under the homestead exemption

2 On November 22, 2023, the district court divided the proceeds and ordered $54,802.97 distributed to Meredith and $56,989.23 distributed to Christopher. 4

in Iowa Code chapter 561. The district court ordered Meredith’s attorney to retain

$20,147.75 of Meredith’s share of the home sale proceeds in trust pending a

hearing. After the hearing, the court found the sale proceeds lost their exempt

status because Meredith never reinvested them in another homestead or showed

that she intended to do so. The court entered judgment on the attorney lien in the

amount of $20,147.75 and ordered that Hartung be paid the lien from the funds

being held in trust. Meredith moved the court to reconsider, and the court denied

her motion.

II. Scope and Standard of Review.

Actions to dissolve a marriage are equity actions, so our review is de novo.

In re Marriage of Miller, 966 N.W.2d 630, 635 (Iowa 2021) (citing Iowa R. App.

P. 6.907). “Under a de novo review we will make our own legal conclusions, as

we are not bound by and give no deference to the trial court’s conclusions of law.”

Woods v. Charles Gabus Ford, Inc., 962 N.W.2d 1, 5 (Iowa 2021) (cleaned up).

To the extent that the issues on appeal turn on questions of fact, we give deference

to the district court’s findings although they are not binding. Id.

III. Analysis.

The sole question on appeal is whether the proceeds from the sale of the

marital home are exempt from the attorney fee lien. Meredith contends that the

sale proceeds are exempt under the homestead exemption set out in Iowa Code

chapter 561.

The general assembly has enacted special procedures that protect

homestead rights “to provide a margin of safety to the family, not only for the benefit

of the family, but for the public welfare and social benefit which accrues to the State 5

by having families secure in their homes.” In re Est. of Waterman, 847 N.W.2d

560, 566–67 (Iowa 2014) (internal quotation marks and citation omitted). Because

of the important public purpose of those protections, “we construe our homestead

statute broadly and liberally to favor homestead owners.” Id. at 567. Among the

protections afforded by the homestead statute, “the general assembly has

expressly limited the circumstances in which a homestead may be vulnerable to

judicial sales for the satisfaction of debts.” Id. Section 561.16 exempts a person’s

homestead from judicial sale unless a special statutory declaration states

otherwise. See, e.g., Iowa Code § 561.21 (listing scenarios in which the

homestead may be sold to satisfy debts).

The district court ordered the homestead sold and the proceeds divided to

effect a property division in the underlying dissolution. See id. § 598.21 (“Upon

every judgment of . . . dissolution, . . . the court shall divide the property of the

parties and transfer the title of the property accordingly . . . .”). As the Iowa

Supreme Court has observed, “Our cases have long recognized that

[section] 598.21 constitutes a ‘special declaration of statute’ which makes

homestead laws ineffective to bar judicial sale of the homestead in adjusting the

property rights of the parties.” In re Marriage of Tierney, 263 N.W.2d 533, 534

(Iowa 1978); see also In re Marriage of Belz, 541 N.W.2d 894, 895 (Iowa 1995)

(holding the homestead exemption inapplicable in an action to enforce the

provisions of a property decree as well as to the property division itself). It has

also rejected the argument that the proceeds from the sale of the homestead as

part of a dissolution proceeding must go to the parties rather than a creditor who

does not hold a lien on the homestead: 6

Because [section] 598.21 creates an exception to the judicial sale prohibition of [section] 561.16, the homestead laws simply have no application when judicial sale is decreed. Once sale is ordered, nothing in the homestead laws purports to control judicial disposition of the proceeds. The proceeds would be subject to the claims of creditors in the hands of the parties. Moreover, nothing in [section] 598.21 prohibits the court from ordering the proceeds applied directly on a debt in settling the parties’ property affairs. Assets and debts are allocable under the dissolution court's statutory power to adjust property rights. A decree which orders homestead sale proceeds paid to a creditor is no less authorized than one which would make one of the parties responsible to pay the same debt from allocated assets.

Tierney, 263 N.W.2d at 535.

Meredith does not challenge the district court’s ability to direct the sale of

the homestead or to divide the proceeds of the sale between the parties. Those

proceeds were held in trust by Christopher’s attorney while the court determined

how to divide them. Before the matter was decided, Hartung filed an attorney fee

lien against Meredith’s share of those proceeds.

When the court entered its declaratory judgment order, it divided the

proceeds from the home sale equally between Meredith and Christopher. It

ordered that they both pay a portion of the property taxes owed on the home, as

well as one-half of the maintenance costs and attorney fees associated with the

sale from their shares of the proceeds. It ordered Meredith to pay past due medical

expenses from her share of the proceeds. In a separate order, the court set the

attorney fee lien and Meredith’s motion to void it for a hearing and ordered

$20,147.75 of Meredith’s share of the home sale proceeds held in trust pending

resolution of the matter.

The provisions of section 598.21 fall under the category of special statutory

declaration. The court ordered the marital home sold to enforce the property 7

division portion of the dissolution decree. With that judicial sale, the home’s sale

proceeds were no longer exempt under section 561.16 and the court could enforce

the attorney fee lien against those proceeds. Accordingly, we affirm.

IV. Appellate Attorney Fees.

The parties on appeal each request an award of their appellate attorney

fees. An award of appellate attorney fees is not a matter of right but rests in this

court’s discretion. In re Marriage of Stenzel, 908 N.W.2d 524, 538 (Iowa Ct. App.

2018). In exercising this discretion, we consider “the needs of the party seeking

the award, the ability of the other party to pay, and the relative merits of the appeal.”

Id. (citation omitted).

Because Meredith was not successful on appeal, we decline to award her

appellate attorney fees. We also decline to award Christopher his appellate

attorney fees because he had no interest in the attorney fees at issue on appeal.

See Hubbard v. Ellithorpe, 112 N.W. 796, 798 (Iowa 1907) (rejecting claim that

former spouse was a necessary party in an action to establish an attorney fee lien

filed by attorney who represented a party in the divorce). Finally, although Hartung

had an interest in and was successful on appeal, we find no authority for granting

him appellate attorney fees. See Thorn v. Kelley, 134 N.W.2d 545, 548 (Iowa

1965) (stating that the right to recover attorney fees only exists if a statute or

agreement expressly authorizes it).