In re the Marriage of Winkler

115 P.3d 948, 200 Or. App. 524, 2005 Ore. App. LEXIS 819
CourtCourt of Appeals of Oregon
DecidedJuly 6, 2005
DocketDO 001050; A119651
StatusPublished
Cited by5 cases

This text of 115 P.3d 948 (In re the Marriage of Winkler) 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 Winkler, 115 P.3d 948, 200 Or. App. 524, 2005 Ore. App. LEXIS 819 (Or. Ct. App. 2005).

Opinion

WOLLHEIM, J.

Husband appeals from a judgment of dissolution of marriage and assigns error to the trial court’s property division. Wife cross-appeals from the dissolution judgment and a supplemental judgment denying her request for attorney fees. On de novo review, ORS 19.415(3),1 we affirm on the appeal and cross-appeal.

Both husband and wife come from wealthy families, which provided each of them with sufficient assets that neither was required to work, nor will either be required to work, in order to support themselves or their children.2 The parties met in Indiana and were married there in 1986. Husband worked as a computer programmer for the family business. Husband conceded that, during the time the parties lived in Indiana, wife maintained their home. Husband began law school in Arizona in the fall of 1988. During the spring of husband’s first year of law school, wife became pregnant with their second child. Until that time wife had been the homemaker.3 During that pregnancy, wife developed a serious medical condition that required her to remain flat on her back or risk losing the child. The parties hired a young neighbor to help wife. Since that time, the parties have regularly employed someone to help raise their three children.

The parties moved to Oregon in 1991. They bought a 99-acre parcel of property that had what wife described as a converted barn. Although husband furnished the proceeds to purchase the property, the property was jointly owned. The parties intended to remodel and enlarge the 4,000 square foot [527]*527house to an 8,500 square foot bed and breakfast. Both parties were involved with the remodeling, which took 18 months to complete. Instead of using the house as a bed and breakfast, the parties decided to use the property as their home. They purchased an adjacent 57-acre parcel. Husband furnished the money to purchase the 57 acres, but the property was owned by a limited liability company in which husband held 51 shares and wife held 49 shares.

Husband and wife then decided to use the acreage as a vineyard. Although it was wife’s idea, husband agreed. The parties decided to start with three acres and planned to increase the vineyard, three acres at a time, to 21 acres. At the time of trial 15 acres were planted. A friend taught wife how to drive a tractor. Wife described her role in managing the vineyard:

“I ordered the grapes * * *. So we had to plow the soil, disk it up, get lime on it, get it ready, so [husband] actually did quite a bit of that, we both did. The first three years we spent preparing the soil and doing the planting. We were both involved in that. I drove to Eugene, picked up the plants. I ordered the plants. I made sure all the stakes were there, the lime was there. I ordered the lime from the truck to come. So I did the managerial part of that. [Husband] and I both did the labor on that.”

Both husband and wife participated in the vineyard project for the first three years of its existence, but thereafter, as the vineyard increased in size and even after the parties separated in 2000, wife managed the vineyard by herself. Later she hired and supervised a manager and other laborers for the vineyard. After the vineyard began to produce grapes, wife processed the grapes and sold bottled wine. Wife rented out the dome house on the vineyard property in order to help pay the expenses of the vineyard. A few years later, wife arranged for the placement of a manufactured home on the vineyard property that she then rented out to provide additional income for the vineyard. With regard to the rentals, she advertised, arranged for lease agreements, and collected the rents from their tenants.

In addition to those responsibilities, wife’s domestic duties continued after the parties moved to Oregon. Although [528]*528wife had domestic help, she hired, trained, and supervised the domestic workers. To some degree, both parties shared the duties of parenting while in Oregon. For her part, wife scheduled medical and dental appointments, did the laundry, supervised the household nanny, cooked family dinners, shopped for food, got the children out of bed in the morning, bathed them, and fed them before the nanny arrived. Wife testified:

“I guess what I would like to say is that the ultimate responsibility of the family has always been mine. * * * [Husband] could choose to help or choose not to, whereas the ultimate responsibility of whether they were fed and when they got up and went to school and did their thing was mine.”

Husband used his personal assets to pay for the family’s living expenses. He gave wife $1,000 per month from which she was expected to pay for one-half of the food, one-third of the children’s clothing, and all of her personal expenses.4 The parties used husband’s funds and did not use money that wife received from her various family trusts to pay for the family’s living expenses. Instead, the parties agreed that the money that wife received from her trusts was for her to use as she pleased.

When the parties separated in 2000, husband remained in the home and wanted to retain the home and vineyard for himself. Wife lived in an apartment in Wilsonville and intended to purchase a home in the area. At the time of the dissolution, the value of the home, the vineyard, and the joint personal property, after subtracting any debts, was $1,008,406. The parties agreed to joint legal custody of their three children.

The primary dispute concerns the division of property. In order to put that dispute in context, it is appropriate to describe the property that the parties own.

Husband owns two bank accounts, the US Bancorp account and the Bank One account. Husband owned both accounts prior to the marriage and kept them in his sole name. In addition, at the time of trial, husband had already [529]*529received $500,000 as an inheritance from his aunt’s estate and was expecting to receive an additional amount in the near future. At the time of trial, the US Bancorp account was valued at $2,335,372, the Bank One account was valued at $1,940,562, and the trial court determined that husband would inherit an additional $1.5 million from his aunt’s estate. Wife did not claim any interest in either the Bank One account or the expected inheritance.

Wife owns a 1973 Cessna airplane that husband purchased for her. The plane is valued at $65,000 and husband agrees that wife should be awarded the plane. Wife’s other assets are easy to describe but hard to value. Wife is the beneficiary of four family trusts known as the Fehsenfeld Trusts. The evidence at trial did not establish the total value of the Fehsenfeld Trusts, but husband argued that the value of wife’s beneficial interest in the Fehsenfeld Trusts exceeds the value of his assets. The evidence established that wife has no right to income, principal, loans, or the remainder from any trust. The trustees had absolute discretion to determine the amount, if any, of annual distributions to wife from the trusts. The annual distributions wife received increased:

Time Period Annual Distribution

Before 1995 $10,000

1995 & 1996 $15,000

1997,1998,& 1999 $25,000

2000 $40,000

2001 $55,000

Free access — add to your briefcase to read the full text and ask questions with AI

Related

In Re the Marriage of Wolfe
273 P.3d 915 (Court of Appeals of Oregon, 2012)
In the Matter of Finear and Finear
247 P.3d 1238 (Court of Appeals of Oregon, 2011)
In the Matter of Marriage of Carlson
236 P.3d 810 (Court of Appeals of Oregon, 2010)
In re the Marriage of Olson
178 P.3d 272 (Court of Appeals of Oregon, 2008)
In re the Marriage of Gano-Ridge
155 P.3d 84 (Court of Appeals of Oregon, 2007)

Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
115 P.3d 948, 200 Or. App. 524, 2005 Ore. App. LEXIS 819, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/in-re-the-marriage-of-winkler-orctapp-2005.