Maldonado v. Maldonado

556 S.W.3d 407
CourtCourt of Appeals of Texas
DecidedJuly 24, 2018
DocketNO. 01-16-00747-CV
StatusPublished
Cited by15 cases

This text of 556 S.W.3d 407 (Maldonado v. Maldonado) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Appeals of Texas primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Maldonado v. Maldonado, 556 S.W.3d 407 (Tex. Ct. App. 2018).

Opinion

Michael Massengale, Justice

This is an appeal from a divorce decree. Before trial, the trial court rendered partial summary judgment confirming that two businesses formed during the marriage were the wife's separate property. After a bench trial on the remaining issues, the court found that the husband had committed waste and fraud, and it divided the marital estate.

Appellant Eleazar Maldonado raises six issues on appeal. First he challenges the partial summary judgment, arguing that there are questions of fact regarding the characterization of the businesses. He also challenges the legal and factual sufficiency of the evidence to support the court's findings of fact regarding waste, fraud on the community estate, and the value of used copiers. And he challenges the division of the marital estate.

Because we conclude that the trial court erred by ruling that one of the businesses was the separate property of appellee Silvia Maldonado, we remand for further proceedings, including a reevaluation of the division of property. The legal and factual sufficiency issues regarding waste and fraud on the community are intertwined with Eleazar's challenge to the division of the property, which must be reevaluated by the trial court on remand, and therefore we need not address them now.

The divorce decree ordered Eleazar to pay Silvia $27,500 as a sanction for disposing of used copy machines in violation of an injunction that prohibited both spouses from "reducing the value of the property of one or both the parties." To the extent Eleazar purports to challenge this award, the issues are inadequately briefed.

Accordingly, we reverse the division of property, and we remand the case to the trial court for proceedings consistent with this opinion.

Background

Eleazar and Silvia Maldonado were married in 1988. At that time, Eleazar worked *410as a wastewater operator, and Silvia worked for a document production company. Two years later, they formed Document Services of Texas, Inc. Silvia was named as the owner of all of the stock issued by the new company. DST provided litigation support, such as copying documents and retrieving medical records. Silvia worked at DST from its inception, and Eleazar began working for the company in the early or mid-1990s. From 2005 to 2013, Eleazar handled finances for DST, while Silvia focused on marketing, production, and quality control. In 2006, Eleazar and Silvia formed ESBEC, LLC, which purchased a building used as DST's place of business.

Throughout the marriage, DST was the Maldonados' primary source of income. Despite the long hours Silvia worked and the volume of DST's business, Eleazar repeatedly reported that they had no money because clients were not paying their bills. In 2011, Silvia began investigating their personal and business finances. After locating bank statements and business financial records, she discovered large sums of money had been withdrawn from their personal and business accounts and could not be reconciled with their expenses. Statements from one business checking account were missing, and other bank statements showed multiple and frequent transfers among the personal and business accounts. Silvia confronted Eleazar about the missing money, and he told her that she "would never find it," nor would she miss it because she had everything she needed.

Nevertheless, Silvia repeatedly questioned Eleazar about the missing money. After an argument at DST's office, Eleazar gave Silvia a signed and notarized letter regarding his interest in DST and ESBEC:

September 7, 2012
I Eleazar Maldonado Sr., I am writing this letter to give all my right in ownership to Silvia Maldonado. All properties and business are including below. Also, any savings or checking accounts that we might have together.
1) [redacted in clerk's record]
2) ESBEC
4201 Caroline
Houston, Texas 77004
3) Discovery Services of Texas, Inc.
4201 Caroline
Houston, Texas 77004
4) [redacted in clerk's record]
Sworn to and subscribe[d] before me on the 7 day of September 2012[.]

A year later, Silvia filed for divorce. Before trial, she filed a motion for partial summary judgment seeking a determination that DST, ESBEC, and other real and personal property were her separate property. She based her summary-judgment motion on Eleazar's 2012 letter, which she attached to the motion, along with an affidavit. In her affidavit, she averred:

5. We both signed this document during our marriage. [Eleazar] signed this agreement to memorialize the gift transfer of the property referred to therein because it was his desire to give me the remaining community assets after I had accused him of embezzling our community assets, which I discovered was true. I had expressed an interest to [Eleazar] in taking some time off from our business (Discovery Services of Texas, Inc.) because I had been working so long without a break. Upon hearing this, [Eleazar] conveyed to me that there was never enough money for the family, insinuating that I couldn't take a break because the family needed me to continue to work these long hours to make money to support them. Upon hearing this, I expressed to [Eleazar] that I *411knew of no real reason why there was never any money, because I was aware of the amount of time I was putting into the business and the money the business was bringing in. The only explanation for having no money was that [Eleazar] must be embezzling the monies from both the company and our personal accounts. Upon being accused of embezzling funds, [Eleazar] became defensive and prepared and signed a document giving me all of our other community assets, and stated that if I thought he had embezzled all of this money, then he would give and gift me all of our remaining community assets. Respondent is the one who prepared the document, listed the assets, signed it and had it notarized before he gave it to me. I signed the document in 2014.
6. After the execution of this document, [Eleazar] gave it to me, and I accepted it and the property listed therein. I was at the time the 100% shareholder of Discovery Services of Texas, Inc. as evidenced in Exhibit A-2 attached hereto.
....
7. Both [Eleazar] and I signed the agreement voluntarily. I did not use force or trick to make [Eleazar] sign. Rather, he signed of his own free will.

Silvia made no specific mention of ESBEC in her affidavit.

Eleazar did not deny that he wrote, signed, and delivered this letter to Silvia. Instead, he argued that she had judicially admitted that the businesses were community property, that he was under duress when he wrote the letter, that his intention in writing the letter was to mollify his wife rather than to give her property, and that he never delivered any property to her.

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Bluebook (online)
556 S.W.3d 407, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/maldonado-v-maldonado-texapp-2018.