Williams v. Miller

794 P.2d 23, 136 Utah Adv. Rep. 32, 1990 Utah App. LEXIS 100, 1990 WL 75605
CourtCourt of Appeals of Utah
DecidedJune 1, 1990
Docket890075-CA
StatusPublished
Cited by7 cases

This text of 794 P.2d 23 (Williams v. Miller) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Appeals of Utah primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Williams v. Miller, 794 P.2d 23, 136 Utah Adv. Rep. 32, 1990 Utah App. LEXIS 100, 1990 WL 75605 (Utah Ct. App. 1990).

Opinion

OPINION

GARFF, Judge:

Appellant Marilyn A. Williams appeals the trial court’s denial of her motion for judgment on the verdict. We affirm.

Williams divorced appellee Ernest Alexander Miller in Las Vegas, Nevada on June 7, 1983. Prior to the parties’ divorce, Miller's son, David C. Miller, had borrowed money from Miller, had repaid some of it, but had defaulted on the remainder. Williams, as part of the terms of their divorce decree, was awarded one-half of these loan proceeds.

The parties disagreed as to how much money David had borrowed from Miller and how much he owed at the time of the divorce. Williams introduced into evidence two assignments, indicating that David had borrowed amounts of $76,697.84 and $13,-000 from Miller, and testified that David had repaid about $10,000. The parties agreed that David had made no payments subsequent to June 7, 1983.

Regarding the $76,679.84 assignment, Miller and David testified that David had borrowed approximately $33,000 with no interest or fixed schedule of payments. They executed a written assignment for the purpose of enabling Miller to collect the amount of the loan, plus an arbitrary amount of interest, from David’s estate in the event that he should die before repaying the loan. They testified that they intended the written assignment to otherwise be disregarded. They also testified that David had repaid all but about $14,000 of the $33,000 debt prior to the parties’ divorce, and that, about one week before the divorce became final and without Williams’s knowledge, they settled their accounts, determined that Miller owed David $20,000 from a joint farming venture, and cancelled out David’s remaining $14,000 debt.

As to the $13,000 assignment, Miller and David testified that David had borrowed $12,000 from Miller to make a down payment on a house, did not purchase the house, and returned the $12,000 two or three days later. However, they had memorialized the loan by executing a similar assignment for $13,000, allowing $1,000 for interest in the event David should die prior to repaying the loan. Neither Miller nor David was able to document the amounts of the loans or their subsequent cancellations because of their “informal” family accounting methods.

Because David made no payments after the finalization of the divorce, Williams brought an action against David in 1984 to recover her share of the loan proceeds. She amended her action to include Miller as a defendant. David and Miller subsequently moved to dismiss and for summary judgment. In January 1988, Judge J. Phillip Eves dismissed the case as to David and denied Miller’s motion for summary judgment on the grounds that the divorce decree was ambiguous as to whether Williams was entitled to one-half the amount of the debt or to only one-half of any payments made on it.

*25 Williams demanded a jury trial to interpret the decree, which was presided over by Judge Ernest F. Baldwin. Following presentation of evidence by both parties, the jury found that David owed Miller $76,-697.84. Williams then moved for judgment on the verdict.

Judge Baldwin denied Williams’s motion for judgment on the verdict on the grounds that, under the Nevada divorce decree, she was only entitled to one-half of any payments David might make on the indebtedness rather than one-half of the total amount of the indebtedness. Because David had made no payments, Williams was, therefore, not entitled to any proceeds under the verdict.

Williams brought this appeal, alleging that the trial court had failed to give full faith and credit to her Nevada divorce decree and that it erroneously denied her motion for judgment on the verdict.

The United States Constitution art. IV, sec. I requires that each state give full faith and credit to the judicial proceedings of every other state. We have traditionally found that this standard has been met when our courts “give the same effect to a decree that would be given by the state of its rendition.” Scott v. Scott, 19 Utah 2d 267, 430 P.2d 580, 583 (1967); see also Lamberth v. Lamberth, 550 P.2d 200, 202 (Utah 1976); Baggs v. Anderson, 528 P.2d 141, 142 (Utah 1974). In so doing, we presume that the law of a sister state is the same as our law unless the contrary is shown. Lamberth, 550 P.2d at 201; Baggs, 528 P.2d at 142. As such, we must regard the parties’ Nevada divorce decree as a final judgment and give it the same effect as any final judgment rendered in this state. Because the parties have not indicated that the relevant law is any different from ours, we rely on our law in making this determination.

During the hearing on Miller’s motion for summary judgment, Williams asserted that the decree entitled her to one-half of the amount of the debt, regardless of whether any payments were made. Miller, on the other hand, interpreted the decree to mean that Williams was only entitled to one-half of any amounts David might pay on the debt. The operative language in the decree states that:

It is further ordered, adjudged and decreed that the Plaintiff receive as his sole and separate property the 1979 Chevrolet truck, 1988 Starfire boat and motor, and one-half of the loan payment (payments being deposited in Plaintiff’s bank account), furniture and furnishings in his possession and his personal belongings.
It is further ordered, adjudged and decreed that the Defendant receive as her sole and separate property the 1977 Mercury, her retirement benefits, the household furniture and furnishings now in her possession, and one-half of the loan payment from David C. Miller (payments being deposited in Defendant’s bank account), her personal belongings and effects.

Judge Eves found that the parties’ decree was ambiguous and denied Miller’s motion. He stated that:

[t]he Court being fully advised in the premises as to the facts and the law, and deeming that the Decree of Divorce out of Nevada could be interpreted as well one way as another, and deeming that if it were interpreted in Plaintiff’s favor that a genuine issue of material fact remains for trial, ...

We do not defer to a trial court’s conclusions of law, but review them under a correction of error standard. In re D.S.K., 133 Utah Adv.Rep. 14, 16, 792 P.2d 118, 123 (Ct.App.1990). Language in a written document is ambiguous if its terms may be understood to support two or more plausible meanings. Whitehouse v. Whitehouse, 790 P.2d 57, 60 (Utah Ct.App.1990). Because the divorce decree simply stated that each party was entitled to one-half the loan payment and did not include any clarifying language as to whether it meant the entire obligation or only any payments that might be made on the obligation, we find that the decree could be understood to support either party’s interpretation and, therefore, is ambiguous. Thus, we affirm Judge Eves’s conclusion.

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Bluebook (online)
794 P.2d 23, 136 Utah Adv. Rep. 32, 1990 Utah App. LEXIS 100, 1990 WL 75605, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/williams-v-miller-utahctapp-1990.