Williams v. Williams

686 So. 2d 805, 1997 WL 30813
CourtDistrict Court of Appeal of Florida
DecidedJanuary 29, 1997
Docket95-4089
StatusPublished
Cited by16 cases

This text of 686 So. 2d 805 (Williams v. Williams) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering District Court of Appeal of Florida primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Williams v. Williams, 686 So. 2d 805, 1997 WL 30813 (Fla. Ct. App. 1997).

Opinion

686 So.2d 805 (1997)

Elena WILLIAMS, Appellant,
v.
Neil M.J. WILLIAMS, Appellee.

No. 95-4089.

District Court of Appeal of Florida, Fourth District.

January 29, 1997.

*806 David A. Riggs and Ryna E. Mehr of Hunt, Cook, Riggs, Mehr & Miller, P.A., Boca Raton, for appellant.

Curtis L. Witters of Glickman, Witters & Marell, West Palm Beach, for appellee.

PARIENTE, Judge.

On appeal, the wife challenges several aspects of the trial court's final judgment, including the unequal distribution of the marital assets, the partition of the marital home, the failure to award permanent periodic alimony, and the award of the federal income tax dependency exemption to the husband. We affirm on all points, except for the unequal distribution of the marital assets.[1]

The parties were married for nine years. This was the wife's first marriage and the husband's second. At the time of the dissolution hearing, the wife was 41 years old and the husband was 44. The parties had one minor child, born on December 12, 1987. Although the wife was a citizen of Chile and the husband and minor child were citizens of the United Kingdom, the parties were all Florida residents.

Prior to their marriage, the wife resided in Chile, where she had been employed for nine years as a flight attendant for a Chilean airline. Upon her marriage to the husband, the wife terminated her employment and relocated with the husband to Germany. Following a 1989 relocation to South Florida, the wife began working part-time outside the home as a salesperson at a clothing store, earning an average of $5,000 to $6,000 a year. The wife's primary role throughout the marriage, however, was that of homemaker.

The husband was primarily responsible for the family's financial support. Initially, the husband worked as an executive with Exxon Corporation, earning approximately $100,000 per year, plus allowances and incentive bonuses. Just prior to the South Florida relocation, he voluntarily terminated his employment, with a resultant reduction in income, to obtain a change in lifestyle. Once in South Florida, the husband formed a corporation that operated a travel agency. The trial court found the husband's after-tax earning capacity to be $45,000 per year.

In its final judgment, the trial court rejected the wife's claim of entitlement to permanent periodic alimony and awarded her three years of rehabilitative alimony of $1,500 per month "to allow her to bridge the gap between her standard of living enjoyed during her nine year marriage and her single status." The trial court also rejected the wife's request for exclusive use and possession of the marital home and granted the husband's request for its partition. The parties agreed that the wife would be the primary custodial parent for the minor child.

The trial court valued the marital assets at $1,188,133, but then unequally distributed the marital assets by awarding $399,673 to the wife and $788,460 to the husband. The trial court found an additional $319,797 of assets to be the husband's nonmarital assets, bringing the husband's total award of marital and nonmarital assets to $1,108,257. The wife does not attack the award of nonmarital assets to her husband, but claims that the division of marital property was neither equitable nor just.

Central to the trial court's unequal distribution of marital assets and to this appeal was the fact that the husband brought a substantial amount of premarital assets into the marriage. The premarital assets included Shearson and Dreyfus accounts, proceeds from the sale of an Australian house, stock options, and $144,000 out of a $290,000 inheritance from the husband's father. The original value of these assets was $637,000.

*807 In classifying these premarital assets as marital assets, the trial court rejected the testimony of the husband's accountant who attempted to trace the premarital assets to specific acquisitions during the marriage. The trial court specifically found that "[t]he greater weight of the evidence establishes that these assets are inextricably co-mingled with other marital assets rendering them all marital assets."[2]

Not only did the trial court find that the premarital assets were inextricably commingled, but it found that during the course of their marriage, the parties had lived above their means by liquidating part of the husband's premarital assets. Despite these findings, the trial court used the original value of the husband's premarital assets as a reason for unequally distributing the parties' marital assets.

In making its equitable distribution award, the trial court attributed only $551,000 as representing "an accumulation of wealth during the marriage by the active labors of a spouse and ... accumulations solely from marital assets." The trial court arrived at this amount by subtracting $637,000, which represented the original value of the premarital assets, from $1,188,133, the total present value of the marital assets.

Although the trial court stated that one-half of the $551,000, or $275,500, would be awarded to each party as part of his or her total equitable distribution award, the trial court did not specifically divide the existing marital assets in accordance with its findings. Nor could it have made such a division, having previously found that the premarital assets could not be traced to any of the existing marital assets.

It is clear, however, that the trial court awarded the husband a significant percentage of additional assets in an attempt to compensate him for having made the original contribution of premarital assets. The husband, in fact, received an additional allocation of marital assets valued at approximately 80% of the original value of the husband's premarital assets.

The net effect of the trial court's allocation was that the wife received roughly one-third of the total marital assets while the husband received the remaining two-thirds. The trial court explained its unequal distribution of marital assets by stating:

The Court began with the premise that the distribution should be equal.... The Husband has been able due to his premarital assets to support the family above the actual family income by the partial liquidation of his formerly premarital assets.... This has enabled the Husband to work less and spend much more time with the child then [sic] most fathers who have to work constantly. The Wife has contributed to the care and education of the child and performed services as a homemaker. The Mother earned an average of $5,000 to $6,000 a year since 1989, but this money was not relied upon as a source of support for the marriage. The real significant financial support came from the Father. The average family earned income appears to be $50,000 per year and their expenses appear to have averaged approximately $60,000 per year....
[T]he Husband accumulated the key assets before the marriage. His various premarital assets were co-mingled with earnings, interest and dividends earned during the marriage. It would not be equitable and just after a nine year marriage to distribute these assets in an equal distribution.

(Emphasis supplied).

In Robertson v. Robertson, 593 So.2d 491, 493 (Fla.1991), our supreme court explained that section 61.075 creates a statutory form of equitable distribution. See § 61.075, Fla. Stat. (1995). Under the statute, the first task is to divide the parties' combined assets and liabilities into two categories: (1) marital; and (2) nonmarital. Robertson, 593 So.2d at 493; see § 61.075(3).

Free access — add to your briefcase to read the full text and ask questions with AI

Related

Kimberly Anne Crossen v. Michael Edward Feeley
District Court of Appeal of Florida, 2026
Knecht v. Palmer
252 So. 3d 842 (District Court of Appeal of Florida, 2018)
Timothy I. Hooker v. Nancy Hooker
174 So. 3d 507 (District Court of Appeal of Florida, 2015)
Denise Sorgen v. Michael Sorgen
162 So. 3d 45 (District Court of Appeal of Florida, 2014)
Stough v. Stough
18 So. 3d 601 (District Court of Appeal of Florida, 2009)
Hitchcock v. Hitchcock
992 So. 2d 436 (District Court of Appeal of Florida, 2008)
Franklin v. Franklin
988 So. 2d 125 (District Court of Appeal of Florida, 2008)
Hay v. Hay
944 So. 2d 1043 (District Court of Appeal of Florida, 2006)
Moss v. Moss
829 So. 2d 302 (District Court of Appeal of Florida, 2002)
Belmont v. Belmont
761 So. 2d 406 (District Court of Appeal of Florida, 2000)
Farrior v. Farrior
736 So. 2d 1177 (Supreme Court of Florida, 1999)
Nelson v. Nelson
733 So. 2d 603 (District Court of Appeal of Florida, 1999)
Vaughn v. Vaughn
714 So. 2d 632 (District Court of Appeal of Florida, 1998)
Spielberger v. Spielberger
712 So. 2d 835 (District Court of Appeal of Florida, 1998)
Horne v. Horne
711 So. 2d 1310 (District Court of Appeal of Florida, 1998)

Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
686 So. 2d 805, 1997 WL 30813, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/williams-v-williams-fladistctapp-1997.