DAVID W. COLEMAN v. SUSAN COLEMAN
(AC 35306)
Connecticut Appellate Court
Argued May 15—officially released July 15, 2014
Beach, Sheldon and Bishop, Js.
(Appeal from Superior Court, judicial district of Danbury, Hon. Sidney Axelrod, judge trial referee.)
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Helen Allen, for the appellee (defendant).
BISHOP, J. The plaintiff, David W. Coleman, appeals from the judgment of the trial court dissolving his marriage to the defendant, Susan Coleman, and entering related financial orders. On appeal, the plaintiff claims that the court abused its discretion in awarding the defendant one half of the balance of a $1 million inheritance received by the plaintiff during the course of their marriage. We affirm the judgment of the trial court.
In its December 11, 2012 memorandum of decision dissolving the parties’ marriage, the court found the following relevant facts. The parties were married on June 27, 1975, and, during the course of the marriage, they had two children, the younger of whom was nineteen years old at the time of the dissolution. In 1983, after the birth of the parties’ older child, the defendant stopped working outside the home and remained a full-time homemaker throughout the marriage. The parties separated in July, 2010, when the defendant moved to New Mexico to reside with her parents. In New Mexico, the defendant began work, earning a gross weekly income of $424. That employment ceased, however, due to her employer’s bankruptcy. The court found that the defendant has an earning capacity of $400 per week.
As of 2012, the plaintiff was employed as a consulting programmer for IBM earning an annual salary of approximately $186,264, plus bonus. In 2012, the plaintiff’s gross salary and bonus totaled $3758 per week before deductions. In his financial affidavit, the plaintiff reported that his net weekly income in 2012 was approximately $2846. In 2007, the plaintiff received an inheritance of approximately $1 million from his mother’s estate. In the ensuing years prior to the marital dissolution, the principal of this inheritance was substantially diminished due to market conditions and investment choices. As of the date of the marital dissolution, the plaintiff had $184,886 of this inheritance in a Morgan Stanley IRA and $592,627 in a separate Morgan Stanley account. The defendant, as well, received funds from her family, approximately $119,000, during the marriage. By the time of the marital dissolution, however, these funds had been depleted by expenditures for family needs.
At the time of the judgment of dissolution, the parties had several joint bank accounts and their family home had a fair market value of $300,000, subject to certain liens and home equity lines totaling $34,763.1 Furthermore, the plaintiff owned two cars, personal items, multiple checking accounts, multiple IRA accounts, an IBM 401 (K), an IBM pension, multiple brokerage accounts, an IBM Employee Stock Purchase Plan, a Morgan Stanley account, and another investment account account with an aggregate value, in accordance with the plaintiff’s financial affidavit, of $2,359,635.42.
The sole issue on appeal is whether the court abused its discretion in awarding the defendant one half of the remaining balance of the inheritance that the plaintiff had received in 2007. Specifically, the plaintiff argues that the court abused its discretion by dividing his inheritance in half without any evidence that the defendant contributed to its acquisition, preservation, or appreciation. In addition, the plaintiff asks this court to conclude, as a matter of policy, that there is a difference between inherited property and other types of property subject to the equitable distribution factors under
At the outset, we set forth the applicable standard of review. ‘‘An appellate court will not disturb a trial court’s orders in domestic relations cases unless the court has abused its discretion or it is found that it could not reasonably conclude as it did, based on the facts presented. . . . In determining whether a trial court has abused its broad discretion in domestic relations matters, we allow every reasonable presumption in favor of the correctness of its action.’’ (Internal quotation marks omitted.) Gervais v. Gervais, 91 Conn. App. 840, 843, 882 A.2d 731, cert. denied, 276 Conn. 919, 888 A.2d 88 (2005). ‘‘In reviewing the trial court’s decision under [the abuse of discretion] standard, we are cognizant that [t]he issues involving financial orders are entirely interwoven. The rendering of judgment in a complicated dissolution case is a carefully crafted mosaic, each element of which may be dependent on the other.’’ (Internal quotation marks omitted.) Id., 844.
We turn now to the relevant legal principles that govern the plaintiff’s claim on appeal. ‘‘The division of property . . . in dissolution proceedings [is] governed by . . . [
Importantly, ‘‘[a] fundamental principle in dissolution actions is that a trial court may exercise broad discretion in . . . dividing property as long as it considers all relevant statutory criteria.’’ (Internal quotation marks omitted.) Boyne v. Boyne, 112 Conn. App. 279, 282, 962 A.2d 818 (2009). ‘‘While the trial court must consider the delineated statutory criteria [when allocating property], no single criterion is preferred over others, and the court is accorded wide latitude in varying the weight placed upon each item under the peculiar circumstances of each case. . . . In dividing up property, the court must take many factors into account. . . . A trial court, however, need not give each factor equal weight . . . or recite the statutory criteria that it considered in making its decision or make express findings as to each statutory factor.’’ (Citations omitted; internal quotation marks omitted.) Lopiano v. Lopiano, 247 Conn. 356, 374–75, 752 A.2d 1000 (1998). ‘‘Generally, we will not overturn a trial court’s division of marital property unless it misapplies, overlooks, or gives a wrong or improper effect to any test or consideration which it was [its] duty to regard. . . . We must, however, consider, the paramount purpose of a property division pursuant to a dissolution proceeding [which] is to unscramble existing marital property in order to give each spouse his or her equitable share at the time of dissolution.’’ (Internal quotation marks omitted.) Rozsa v. Rozsa, 117 Conn. App. 1, 4, 977 A.2d 722 (2009).
In the present case, the court’s memorandum of decision dissolving the parties’ marriage had two distinguishable sections. In the initial section, the court set forth its factual findings. At the end of this section, the court indicated that it had ‘‘considered the provisions of
Nor are we persuaded by the plaintiff’s policy argument. As noted, the plaintiff urges this court to conclude that when one spouse inherits from his or her family, the amount of that inheritance should be separated from other assets acquired during the course of the marriage and the court, in treating an inherited asset, should place particular weight on the failure of the noninheriting spouse to contribute at all to the acquisition of the inheritance. It is noteworthy that in making this argument, the plaintiff would have this court ignore his own lack of participation in the acquisition of this inherited asset.
In sum, although the plaintiff concedes, as he must, that an inheritance received by one of the parties before the dissolution of a marriage constitutes part of that person’s estate subject to assignment under
The judgment is affirmed.
In this opinion the other judges concurred.