Larrea v. Chand

CourtCourt of Appeals of Arizona
DecidedOctober 29, 2025
Docket1 CA-CV 25-0005-FC
StatusPublished

This text of Larrea v. Chand (Larrea v. Chand) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Appeals of Arizona primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Larrea v. Chand, (Ark. Ct. App. 2025).

Opinion

IN THE ARIZONA COURT OF APPEALS DIVISION ONE

In re the Matter of:

ANGEL JOSEFINA LARREA, Petitioner/Appellee,

v.

RAVI CHAND, Respondent/Appellant.

No. 1 CA-CV 25-0005 FC FILED 10-29-2025

Appeal from the Superior Court in Maricopa County No. FN2022-002036 The Honorable Amy Michelle Kalman, Judge

APPEAL DISMISSED IN PART; AFFIRMED IN PART; REVERSED AND REMANDED IN PART

COUNSEL

Alexander R. Arpad, Attorney at Law, Phoenix By Alexander R. Arpad Counsel for Petitioner/Appellee

Rose Law Group, PC, Scottsdale By Audra E. Petrolle Counsel for Respondent/Appellant LARREA v. CHAND Opinion of the Court

OPINION

Presiding Judge Paul J. McMurdie delivered the Court’s opinion, in which Judge Samuel A. Thumma and Judge Kent E. Cattani joined.

M c M U R D I E, Judge:

¶1 Ravi Chand (“Husband”) appeals from the decree dissolving his marriage to Angel Josefina Larrea (“Wife”).

¶2 We affirm the superior court’s rulings that Husband failed to prove a right to an offset or reimbursement for separate-property contributions he made to the community during and after the marriage. We also affirm the court’s decision to treat a future tax benefit as community property in its equalization analysis and its preclusion of Husband’s appraiser’s opinion. We reverse the court’s valuation of a community vehicle and its use of a rejected home-valuation boost to calculate Wife’s equalization award, and we remand so that the court may adjust the award accordingly.

¶3 We dismiss the appeal as much as it challenges the award of attorney’s fees and costs against Husband because the court did not resolve the award in the decree, and Husband did not file a notice of appeal after the court entered the separate judgment awarding fees and costs.

FACTS AND PROCEDURAL BACKGROUND

¶4 Husband and Wife married in 2018. Wife served a dissolution petition in mid-2022.

¶5 The matter proceeded to a trial in March 2024. But the court continued the trial to a second day in August because of late disclosures from both parties. Finding Husband more at fault for the disclosure issues, the court sanctioned him by awarding Wife interim attorney’s fees, to be credited against any future fee award.

¶6 At the trial, Husband argued that he had a right to recoup around $79,000 of separate funds he had deposited during the marriage into a community bank account used for community expenses (“Wells Fargo x3581”). He also argued that he should recoup post-service contributions of separate funds to the community account used to pay a tax liability and

2 LARREA v. CHAND Opinion of the Court

recurring community debts, including the monthly car loan payments on the parties’ Tesla.

¶7 Wife’s financial expert testified on the first trial day and updated his opinions both on the second trial day and in connection with Wife’s written closing argument. The expert testified that the transaction history for Wells Fargo x3581 rendered Husband’s separate property deposits untraceable. He explained that, “after [many, possibly] thousands of transactions,” there was “no way to differentiate one dollar from another,” analogizing the situation to both “a scrambled egg that I cannot unscramble” and a can of white paint that, when mixed in with black paint, made the color “completely grey.”

¶8 Wife’s expert also calculated the values of the parties’ two community vehicles: the Tesla and an unencumbered Infiniti. In determining the Tesla’s equity value, the expert accounted for the loan payments due by the first trial day. Although the expert testified that he understood more loan payments were due before the second trial day, he did not update his valuation to reflect those payments.

¶9 Wife’s expert also opined on the future tax benefit arising from the community’s investment in a cryptocurrency firm that went bankrupt. He testified that the tax benefit for the loss was a real asset that only Husband could realize given the investment’s structure. He assigned it a value based on the applicable tax rates. On the second trial day, the expert added that he believed Husband had begun to realize the tax benefits.

¶10 Along with the financial expert, Wife offered the testimony and report of an appraiser who valued the community home. In response, Husband sought to introduce a competing appraiser’s report or recite the appraiser’s opinion during his testimony. But the court precluded the report and prevented Husband from testifying to anything except that he had obtained an appraisal. The court reasoned that although neither party had invoked application of the Arizona Rules of Evidence (“Evidence Rules”) via Arizona Rule of Family Law Procedure (“Family Rule”) 2, the Evidence Rules governing expert and lay opinions still applied, and Husband was not qualified to offer an opinion under those rules.

¶11 After considering the evidence and the parties’ written closing arguments, the court entered the dissolution decree in November 2024. The court determined that the community property should be divided equally. The court adopted nearly all of Wife’s expert’s positions, finding

3 LARREA v. CHAND Opinion of the Court

that he “was credible and presented an appropriate and logically consistent methodology for calculating community property as well as the competing and offsetting equalization payments due to each spouse.” The court agreed with the expert that Husband’s separate-property deposits into Wells Fargo x3581 were untraceable and found that Husband provided no clear, convincing, or credible tracing analysis. The court also found that Husband failed to adequately or clearly show payment from his separate funds for recurring community expenses post-service, and it gave him no credit for paying the alleged community tax debt.

¶12 The court divided all community bank accounts (including Wells Fargo x3581) equally, credited Wife for Husband’s receipt of the tax benefit for the community’s cryptocurrency-investment loss, credited Wife for Husband’s receipt of the community home, and awarded the Infiniti to Wife and the Tesla to Husband. The court used Wife’s appraiser’s opinion to value the home and her financial expert’s opinion to value the Tesla, without regard to the loan payments due by the second trial day. The court ordered Husband to pay Wife a substantial equalization.

¶13 The court found in the decree that Wife had a right to recover attorney’s fees, expert’s fees, and costs under Arizona Revised Statutes (“A.R.S.”) § 25-324 because Husband had far more financial resources and he acted more unreasonably in the litigation. The court certified the decree as an appealable judgment under Family Rule 78(b) without deciding the amount of fees and costs to be awarded. Some months later, the court awarded Wife specific legal and expert fees and costs in an appealable judgment under Family Rule 78(c).

¶14 Husband timely filed a notice of appeal from the Family Rule 78(b) decree, but he did not file a notice of appeal from the Family Rule 78(c) judgment calculating the fees and costs. He challenges both the decree and the fee judgment in his appellate briefs.

JURISDICTION

¶15 Our jurisdiction is limited to that specifically provided by statute, Brionna J. v. Dep’t of Child Safety, 247 Ariz. 346, 349, ¶ 7 (App. 2019), and “[w]e have an independent duty to determine whether we have jurisdiction over an appeal,” Desert Palm Surgical Grp., P.L.C. v. Petta, 236 Ariz. 568, 576, ¶ 15 (App. 2015); Walker v. Walker, 256 Ariz. 295, 298, ¶ 10 (App. 2023) (A judgment must comply with the applicable procedural rules.). We must dismiss an appeal when we lack jurisdiction. Davis v. Cessna Aircraft Corp., 168 Ariz. 301, 304 (App. 1991).

4 LARREA v. CHAND Opinion of the Court

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Larrea v. Chand, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/larrea-v-chand-arizctapp-2025.