McMorris v. McMorris

654 So. 2d 742, 1995 WL 225713
CourtLouisiana Court of Appeal
DecidedApril 10, 1995
DocketCA 94 0590
StatusPublished
Cited by4 cases

This text of 654 So. 2d 742 (McMorris v. McMorris) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Louisiana Court of Appeal primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
McMorris v. McMorris, 654 So. 2d 742, 1995 WL 225713 (La. Ct. App. 1995).

Opinion

654 So.2d 742 (1995)

Mary Ann Nini McMORRIS
v.
Tommie Edward McMORRIS, Sr.

No. CA 94 0590.

Court of Appeal of Louisiana, First Circuit.

April 10, 1995.

*744 Walton Barnes, Baton Rouge, for plaintiff-appellant, Mary Ann Nini McMorris.

Richard McShan, Greensburg, for defendant-appellee, Tommie Edward McMorris, Sr.

Before GONZALES and PARRO, JJ., and REDMANN[1], J. Pro Tem.

WILLIAM V. REDMANN, Judge Pro Tem.

An ex-wife appeals the judgment in her community partition suit, complaining primarily that it treats as community the funds she received during marriage in tort settlement and contract disability payments from a personal injury before marriage. Other complaints include that the judgment does not allot assets nor fix monetary amounts due between the ex-spouses.[2]

We reverse as to funds received by the wife on account of pre-marital personal injury; we also rule on some other aspects; and we remand with instructions for entry of a partition judgment in executable form in accordance with R.S. 9:2801.

Damages from pre-marital personal injury

A cause of action for damages due to personal injuries sustained prior to marriage is "property acquired by a spouse prior to the establishment of a community property regime," C.C. art. 2341, and therefore is separate property. It is not converted into community when settled by payment during marriage (not even in part, as by prorating for future lost earnings).[3]Broussard v. Broussard, 340 So.2d 1309 (La.1976); Young v. Young, 549 So.2d 437 (La.App. 3d Cir. 1989).[4]

The ex-husband also argues that the check's having been payable to both spouses shows that part of the settlement was for his loss of consortium (his automobile damage was separately paid).[5] But the ex-husband had no right of action for loss of consortium. Although he then lived with the victim and thus may have suffered a loss of consortium, he was her fiancé and not her husband at the time of the injury. C.C. art. 2315 allows consortium-loss damages only to "persons who would have had a cause of action for wrongful death of an injured person," and C.C. art. 2315.2 limits wrongful death actions to sue on that cause of action exclusively to spouse and children, then parents, and then siblings. Leckelt v. Eunice Superette, Inc., 555 So.2d 11 (La.App. 3d Cir.1989), writ denied *745 559 So.2d 141 (La.1990).[6]

Contract payments during community for pre-marital disability

The ex-wife's monthly payments for her pre-marital disability became due before her marriage, under the terms of her pre-marital employment contract. Her right to those contractual payments was property, and was acquired by her when she became disabled by injury before her marriage, and was therefore her separate property (like her right to the tort damages). C.C. art. 2341.

The ex-husband contends that, on similar facts, Johnson v. Johnson, 532 So.2d 503 (La.App. 1st Cir.1988) (cited by the trial judge), concluded that disability benefits were community. We do not agree that the facts are similar, except that in both cases the disability benefits came from employment. The distinction is that the employment and all disability entitlements came after the marriage in Johnson, while here they came before the marriage.

Thus Mrs. McMorris's $39,684.93 total of monthly disability payments, as well as her $55,000 settlement (and by stipulation her $1,184.82 vacation pay), were her separate property.

A large part of the $55,000 is traceable, but the funds were not segregated, and the doctrine of commingling, as affected by the 1979 revision of the marital regimes law, is therefore addressed.

Commingling

Under the 1979 marital regimes law, with the husband no longer the exclusive manager of the community, there is little reason for differing treatments of the two spouses' separate funds.

C.C. art. 2341 makes separate (among other things) any property acquired before marriage, or "acquired by a spouse with separate things or with separate and community things when the value of the community things is inconsequential in comparison with the value of the separate things used."[7] Perhaps most important to accounting at dissolution, art. 2367 provides that separate property "used for the acquisition, use, improvement, or benefit of community property" is reimbursable as to half by the other spouse, although only to the extent of the other's half of the community net of community debts.[8]

Katherine S. Spaht and W. Lee Hargrave, Matrimonial Regimes (16 La. Civil Law Treatise), § 3.40, at 117-18 (1989) (hereafter, Spaht and Hargrave), analyze commingling, and its possible loss of effect on net result, under today's law:

A necessary implication of the text of Civil Code Article 2341 is that only a new thing acquired with other property or funds becomes community. Combinations of separate and community fungible items do not produce a new thing. [Citing La. Civ.Code arts. 507-516; Aubry & Rau, Droit Civil Français, Vol. II (7th ed. updated) in J. Mayda, 2 Civil Law Translations 265-266 (1966).] In such a case, the mixture may be presumed community, but if proof is made of the separate contribution, the separate estate of one spouse will remain owner of those things. [Citing Succession *746 of Sonnier, 208 So.2d 562 (La.App. 3d Cir.1968), inter alia.]
. . . .
It is arguable that separate and community funds put into one bank account do not produce a new thing; money is the ultimate fungible item. In such an analysis, the funds in the account are presumed community, but if it can be proved that separate funds were deposited and not withdrawn, those funds would remain separate. On the other hand, it might be argued that a new thing, an account, is produced and is all community. Even so, if it can be proved that separate funds were contributed, the separate estate of that spouse is entitled to reimbursement for the use of those separate funds. [C.C. art. 2367.] The sum involved would be the same under either analysis. Under the first analysis, the spouse whose separate funds were deposited still owns them. In the second case, that spouse has a personal claim against the other [sic] for that amount. In most cases, this would make no difference between the parties....[9]

Since the 1979 enactment of art. 2341, mixing of funds in the same account need not extinguish the separate character of either the husband's or the wife's separate funds; only indiscriminate commingling, so that one cannot identify or differentiate among the funds, results in the account being deemed community. Curtis v. Curtis, 403 So.2d 56 (La.1981). See also Kyson v. Kyson, 596 So.2d 1308 (La.App. 2d Cir.1991), writ denied 599 So.2d 314 (1992), holding commingling did not convert separate funds into community.[10]

Moreover, when a joint account is deemed community because of indiscriminate commingling, it is not inescapable that a spouse loses entitlement to recoup the value of funds invested into community assets or payment of community debts. See Young v. Young, 549 So.2d at 441, n. 8.

Tracing the separate funds

It seems reasonable that under art. 2341, and as pointed out by Curtis v. Curtis

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Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
654 So. 2d 742, 1995 WL 225713, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/mcmorris-v-mcmorris-lactapp-1995.