Linn v. Miller

261 S.W.3d 471, 99 Ark. App. 407, 2007 Ark. App. LEXIS 584
CourtCourt of Appeals of Arkansas
DecidedSeptember 5, 2007
DocketCA 06-1479
StatusPublished
Cited by7 cases

This text of 261 S.W.3d 471 (Linn v. Miller) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Appeals of Arkansas primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Linn v. Miller, 261 S.W.3d 471, 99 Ark. App. 407, 2007 Ark. App. LEXIS 584 (Ark. Ct. App. 2007).

Opinion

Wendell L. Griffen, Judge.

Phillip Linn appeals from an order modifying a divorce decree. He argues that the trial court lacked jurisdiction to make the modifications. We agree and reverse and remand.

Factual and Procedural History

Phillip Linn and Brenda Linn Miller were divorced in 2004 after more than thirty years of marriage. Their property-settlement agreement divided, among other things, a 192-acre tract of land, with Phillip to receive 112 acres and Brenda to receive 80 acres. Other than these proportions, no particular manner of division was specified.

Later, a survey separated the tract into 80- and 112-acre parcels. Brenda’s parcel was a reverse-L-shaped tract along the eastern side of the acreage. Phillip received the remainder of the land. 1 The manner in which the boundaries were drawn gave Phillip a strip of land across the top of Brenda’s northern section. This prevented Brenda from accessing a public road just north of her parcel. However, Brenda did not discover this situation when viewing the survey. She therefore voiced no objection when a divorce decree was entered stating that the 192 acres “shall be” surveyed and divided into 80- and 112-acre parcels. (The trial court apparently was not aware that a survey had already taken place.)

The decree also provided that an $18,000 mortgage balance on the 192 acres would be prorated between the parties based on the amount of acreage each held. Thus, Brenda was responsible for 41.7% (80/192) of the mortgage payments and Phillip for 58.3% (112/192). Each party was to “assume all obligations pertaining to the real property in their name including any indebtedness. . . and . . . indemnify and hold the other harmless from same.”

Thereafter, Brenda and Phillip disagreed over the enforcement of the decree, and the trial judge ordered them to mediation. This produced a Memorandum of Understanding that dealt, in part, with the 192 acres but did not change the division of the land or the parties’ pro rata obligations on the mortgage. The parties did agree that each would be responsible for his or her own attorney fees and costs. The Memorandum was adopted in an amended divorce decree dated April 21, 2005. The decree stated that the court retained jurisdiction for “such further Orders as may from time to time be necessary for the enforcement of this Amended Decree of Divorce.”

In late 2005, Brenda decided to sell ten acres of her eighty-acre tract. However, she was unable to do so because she could not obtain a partial release of the mortgage for the ten acres alone. To accomplish the sale, she paid off the entire mortgage balance on the 192 acres. Around this same time, she also discovered that the northern part of her property did not extend all the way to the public road. As a result, she filed a motion on November 17, 2005, asking the court to “clarify” the April 21, 2005 decree. She sought ownership of or an easement in the northern part of the property to allow ingress and egress to the public road and asked the court to require Phillip to reimburse her $8124.04 for his share of the mortgage payoff. Phillip asserted that the trial court lacked jurisdiction to modify the decree and, in any case, that no modifications were necessary.

At the hearing on Brenda’s motion, she testified that the mortgage on the 192 acres had a maturity date of 2021 and that during the marriage, she and Phillip made mortgage payments of $274 per month. However, in order to close her sale of the ten acres in 2005, she paid the entire $16,969.65 balance on the mortgage. She stated that, after receiving some money from Phillip, he owed her $8124.04 for his portion of the payoff. Brenda also testified that she saw the survey of the 192 acres around the time the original divorce decree was entered, but she did not “understand that kind of thing” and believed her property went all the way to the public road. She said that she learned she was “landlocked” when another survey was taken in 2005 in connection with her sale of the ten acres. On cross-examination, she testified that during the period that the court approved the property-settlement agreement and during the time that she and Phillip were in mediation, the question of what would happen if one of them sold his or her portion of the property “never came up” and “really wasn’t an issue at the time.”

Surveyor Jeffrey West testified that when he conducted the survey, Phillip instructed him to divide the property in such a way as to give him a 58.5-foot strip running across the northern boundary of the property. West offered no testimony that Phillip’s request was nefarious or motivated by improper motives; rather, he said, Phillip told him that the particular strip of land had some historical significance to Phillip’s family. West also noted that Brenda’s son, Darren Linn, was present during the survey. West acknowledged that Brenda’s property line stopped before it got to the public road on the north and that .9 acres of Phillip’s property separated her from the road.

Phillip testified that he did not intend to “spite” Brenda by asking the surveyor to give him the strip of land across her northern boundary. He said that the property once belonged to his grandfather. He admitted in his testimony that he owed Brenda $8124.04 on the mortgage and that nothing would prevent him from taking out a mortgage on his acreage to pay her off. However, he said that he did not think it was fair that he be required to pay Brenda the entire amount in one lump sum because, at the time Brenda paid the loan off, it was fifteen years from maturity. He said he would have no problem making an annual payment or monthly payments to Brenda.

Following the hearing, the court entered a final order dated August 25, 2006, requiring Phillip to pay Brenda $8124.04 within sixty days; declaring that the division of the 192 acres in the divorce decree was in error and that, due to an “error in the survey,” Phillip should deed Brenda .9 acres “running across the top” of her property; and awarding Brenda $4023.78 in fees and costs. Phillip filed a timely notice of appeal.

Jurisdiction to Modify the 2005 Decree

Phillip contends that neither Ark. R. Civ. P. 60 nor the trial court’s reservation of jurisdiction in the April 2005 decree empowered the court to modify the decree in its August 2006 order. We agree for the following reasons.

Ark. R. Civ. P. 60

Arkansas Rule of Civil Procedure 60 governs the circumstances in which a trial court may grant relief from a decree already entered. Rule 60(a) allows a trial court to modify or vacate a judgment for certain stated purposes within ninety days of its having been entered. Clearly, that subsection does not apply here as the August 2006 order was entered more than ninety days after the April 2005 decree. Rule 60(c) allows a court to vacate or modify a decree after the expiration of ninety days for one of several enumerated reasons, such as newly-discovered evidence, fraud, or misprisions of the clerk. See New Holland Credit Co. v. Hill, 362 Ark. 329, 208 S.W.3d 191 (2005). That subsection is also inapplicable.

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Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
261 S.W.3d 471, 99 Ark. App. 407, 2007 Ark. App. LEXIS 584, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/linn-v-miller-arkctapp-2007.