In re the Marriage of Landsem

927 P.2d 625, 144 Or. App. 555, 1996 Ore. App. LEXIS 1725
CourtCourt of Appeals of Oregon
DecidedNovember 20, 1996
Docket95C-31455; CA A92096
StatusPublished
Cited by2 cases

This text of 927 P.2d 625 (In re the Marriage of Landsem) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Appeals of Oregon primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
In re the Marriage of Landsem, 927 P.2d 625, 144 Or. App. 555, 1996 Ore. App. LEXIS 1725 (Or. Ct. App. 1996).

Opinion

LEESON, J.

Husband appeals from a dissolution judgment, challenging the trial court’s division of the marital property and its award of spousal support to wife. We remand for entry of judgment recalculating the equalizing judgment and modifying spousal support.

We recite the facts as of the time of trial in 1995. The parties were married for 17 years. Husband is 49 years old and wife is 55. Wife was awarded custody of the parties’ child, age 16. Husband is a car and truck salesman who earns an average gross monthly income of $1,873 plus benefits that include reimbursement of his expenses, medical and dental insurance, the payment of his residential and cellular telephone bills, and payment of gas, maintenance and insurance for his car. Wife works as a seasonal employee for a department store and earns approximately $823 per month, gross. She has health problems that include a history of anxiety disorder and an irregular heartbeat that is treatable with prescription medication, but there is no evidence that these problems are incapacitating or prevent her from being employed full time.

Husband’s mother (Landsem) owns over 100 acres of farmland in Clackamas County. Both before and during the marriage, husband occasionally helped Landsem with the operation of the farm without receiving any salary. At one point, husband and Landsem had a joint checking account that was used for farming expenses. In November 1975, husband purchased and took title in his name only to a 40-acre parcel adjacent to Landsem’s property. He testified that he purchased the land for Landsem with her money, because the owners of the property were unwilling to sell it to her. He further testified that both before and during the marriage the property actually belonged to Landsem. After he and wife had been married for approximately two years, husband deeded a one-half interest in the property to wife, listing “gift” as the consideration for the transfer.1 In 1986, a year [558]*558after the mortgage on the property was paid off, husband deeded his remaining one-half interest in the property to Landsem, telling her that he “didn’t want his name on the property any longer.” As a consequence of that transfer, only wife and Landsem’s names appeared on the title. Both husband and wife testified that they made no payments toward the property, nor did they receive any income from it. Some of the expenses associated with the property were paid from Landsem and husband’s joint farm account, the property tax statements list Landsem and wife as equal owners and the parties listed wife’s interest in the property on financial reports, including a Key Bank financial statement completed in 1988.

For most of the marriage, husband owned and operated a car dealership, earning approximately $40,000 per year. Wife, a high school graduate with one term of college education and a few years of secretarial and office management experience, went to work for the dealership in 1980. She performed a variety of tasks, including managing the accounts payable, handling customer complaints and hiring and firing some personnel. She earned between $20,000 and $24,000 per year.

In 1991, the dealership lost some of its financing and began to fail. In November of that year, the dealership was unable to deliver a car that had been ordered by a customer until wife’s mother (Grayson) gave the dealership $9,818.96 to help pay the purchase price. The parties did not sign a promissory note for the money from Grayson, but both husband and wife testified that it was a loan. Husband testified that at the time of the loan, Grayson was “very, very concerned that she would get the money back” and that she was paid in full after the car was delivered to the customer. Wife testified that Grayson’s loan had not been repaid, although she acknowledged that the loan had been a business debt and that all of the dealership’s debts had been paid off or resolved in some other way. Grayson did not testify at the trial.

[559]*559Despite Grayson’s help, the parties were forced to sell part of the dealership and dissolve the rest of it in December 1991. Thereafter, husband sold vehicles for two different dealerships simultaneously, earning a gross monthly income of approximately $3,200. Ihe parties separated in June 1994, and husband moved out of the family home. Two months after the separation, husband filed for personal bankruptcy. In the fall of 1994, after almost two years with both dealerships, husband quit working for one of them and, as a result, his income decreased to its level at trial. After the loss of the dealership, wife was unable to find work until November 1995, when she began working at a department store. Wife testified that she has been unable to find clerical work because of her lack of experience with computers. She estimated that she needs three to five terms of classes at the local community college to obtain the necessary skills.

From August 1994 until November 1995, husband paid wife support totaling $10,879.58 and made monthly mortgage payments of $278 on the family home. Husband testified that he was able to meet those obligations only by borrowing money from Landsem. Landsem testified that she had given husband and wife gifts of money in the past, but that her payments to husband of approximately $25,259 from June 1994 through November 1995 were loans. She testified that husband had executed promissory notes for the approximate balance, but admitted that husband had not made any payments toward the balance, that she had not charged any interest and that she would not sue him for the balance unless she needed the money.

After husband moved out, wife also received money from Grayson. She testified that Grayson loaned her approximately $10,777 to assist with living expenses. She produced no notes, checks, or other records documenting those advances, but testified that she calculated the total she owed her mother by determining the amount of money she had withdrawn from a joint checking account that she shared with Grayson.

The trial court found that Landsem and wife were equal co-owners of the 40-acre farm property. It awarded wife’s one-half interest in the property to husband and [560]*560awarded the family home to wife. It ruled that all monies advanced by Landsem to husband were gifts, but that there were marital debts to Grayson both for the 1991 car loan ($9,818.96) and for the $10,777 that she had loaned to wife after the parties separated. The court assigned to wife debt in the amount of $20,596, which offset wife’s property award by that amount. The court then awarded an equalizing judgment of $3,646.502 to husband, because wife had received more property than he had.

With respect to the parties’ incomes, the trial court found that husband’s earning capacity was $2,200 per month and that wife would be able to obtain an entry-level job where she could earn approximately $1,500 per month after she received the appropriate computer training. It set spousal support at $750 per month for two years, $350 per month for the following two years, and $150 per month thereafter. The court acknowledged that, with the addition of his required child support payment of $135, husband would find it difficult to make monthly payments of $750 for the first two years, and that he might have to seek additional employment or work longer hours at the dealership. However, the court noted that the amount it ordered was not “substantially higher” than what husband had been paying during the previous 18 months.

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Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
927 P.2d 625, 144 Or. App. 555, 1996 Ore. App. LEXIS 1725, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/in-re-the-marriage-of-landsem-orctapp-1996.