Lydia Steekler appeals from a divorce decree dividing property with Ted Steekler. We affirm.
Ted and Lydia were married in Germany on August 17,1981. Ted was about 35 years old and Lydia was about 30. By that time Ted had already served almost 17 years in the United States Army. When he retired from the Army in March 1992, the Stecklers moved to Valley City, Ted’s hometown. Lydia’s mother, Jana Mayer, joined them there when she retired a short time later.
Ted filed for divorce in January 1993. No children were born during the marriage, no spousal support was requested, and the principal question at trial was an equitable distribution of property.
The major assets owned by the Stecklers were their home and Ted’s current military pension of $1,963 a month plus a $162 disability payment. 1 The trial court distributed the Steekler’s property this way:
Lydia Ted
Home 116,000.00
Pension 126,375.04
Vehicles 8,975.00 19,358.00
Household Items 27,262.00 1,000.00
Bank Accounts 13,593.16 3,961.46
Cash Payments 10,000.00 (10,000.00)
Attorney Fees 1,000.00 ( 1,000.00)
Mayer Debt (44,765.00)
$132,065.61 $139,694.50 2
The marital estate, including all of Ted’s pension, was originally valued at $271,760.11.
Lydia is a German citizen and was uncertain at trial whether she would remain in the United States. This uncertainty led the trial court to choose not to assign her a portion of Ted’s future pension benefits. Instead, the court asked for post-trial briefs on the present value of Ted’s pension. In response, Lydia’s attorney valued the pension at $126,-375.04. Shortly after the court used this value in its written opinion, Lydia’s attorney learned that the present value of Ted’s pension was actually $314,590.72 and moved to amend the findings of fact accordingly and to increase her division. At a hearing on the motion, the trial court accepted the corrected value of the pension but denied the motion because the overall distribution was “fair under the circumstances.”
Lydia argues on appeal that the trial court’s distribution of property is not equitable. Specifically, she claims that the court erroneously valued the debt to her mother, the monthly cash payments totalling $10,000, and Ted’s pension, and thereby made the division of property inequitable without a satisfactory explanation. Ted argues that the distribution is explained and equitable. We agree.
How we review property distributions was recently summarized in Gaulrapp v. Gcml-rapp:
In a divorce, the trial court must “make such equitable distribution of the real and personal property of the parties as may seem just and proper.... ” In making this distribution, “the trial court must consider all relevant factors and guidelines.” “A trial court’s determinations on matters of property division are treated as findings of *25 fact and will not be set aside on appeal unless they are clearly erroneous under NDRCivP 52(a), or they are induced by an erroneous conception of the law.”
MAYER DEBT
Jana Mayer, Lydia’s mother, paid $40,000 toward the $105,000 purchase price of the Stecklers’ home in 1990. Instead of receiving interest on the debt, Mayer lived with the Stecklers. Ted and Lydia formally assigned Mayer an interest in the home of “the greater of $40,000.00 or 40% of the sale price of the property if the property is sold.” In his NDROC 8.3 property listing, Ted valued the home at $116,000 and the Mayer debt at $40,000. Although Lydia valued the home at $120,000, she also listed the Mayer debt at $40,000. As with all the property listed by Ted and Lydia, the court relied on these identical amounts when making its own determination of the debt. Thus, like in
Dick v. Dick,
Normally, if a post-judgment motion is made, “the party making such a motion is limited on appeal to a review of the grounds presented to the trial court.”
Andrews v. O’Hearn,
CASH PAYMENTS
“[T]o account for the disparity in division of property,” the trial court ordered Ted to pay Lydia $10,000 in 20 monthly installments of $500. Lydia argues that the trial court erred by failing either to discount these payments to present value or to award interest on the deferred payments. This argument was also not raised in Lydia’s post-judgment motion. We agree that a court should ordinarily expressly discount periodic payments without interest to present value, but the error is minor in this case.
Periodic cash payments must be awarded with interest or discounted to present value if intended as a distribution of property.
Sateren v. Sateren,
PENSION DISTRIBUTION
The difficult question on appeal is the distribution of Ted’s military pension. In making an equitable division of property, the trial court must first determine the value of all the parties’ property, including assets brought into the marriage.
Gaulrapp,
A military pension is a marital asset for equitable distribution, subject to some federal limitations. 10 U.S.C.A. § 1408 (West Supp.1994).
Bullock v. Bullock,
“Division of retirement benefits at the time of divorce is preferred where there are sufficient assets available at the time of divorce to divide the present value of the retirement benefits without causing an undue hardship to either spouse and where testimony on valuation is not speculative.”
Zander v. Zander,
The effect of the court’s decision was to “set aside to Ted essentially the entire portion of the pension accumulated prior to the marriage,” as Lydia observes, and to divide the rest of the property roughly equally. That coincides with the focus of the
Bullock
formula itself, which is to value the extramarital portion of a pension so it can be “set aside ... where fairly possible.”
Gaulrapp,
We have previously approved unequal distributions where premarital or gifted property is awarded to the recipient spouse in a substantial marital estate. In
Dick,
the parties were married for 17 years and had no children.
In this ease, the Steeklers had a net marital estate of $459,000, with Ted awarded $188,000 in pension benefits earned before marriage and with the remaining $271,000 divided nearly equally. The fact that Ted brought significant property into the marriage is not enough by itself to justify the wide disparity in the court’s distribution.
VanRosendale v. VanRosendale,
Lydia argues that the trial court’s distribution must be erroneous when the marital estate was originally undervalued by $188,000. This argument overlooks the second oversight in the court’s original decision. The trial court admitted at the post-trial hearing that it “didn’t take into consideration ... things that [Ted] accumulated prior to his marriage,” as the Bullock formula does. The trial court observed that this oversight offsets the erroneous valuation of Ted’s pension. We agree.
Lydia also argues that she received less property than finally intended by the trial court. Based on several remarks by the court about a “credit,” she claims the court did not intend to set aside the entire premarital portion of Ted’s pension, but incorrectly believed that its final valuation of the distributed estate included more of the pension than computed under the
Bullock
formula. It is true that a small amount ($4,000) of Ted’s pension was included in the equally divided portion of the estate although earned before the marriage. An unintended distribution based on erroneous valuations can be clearly erroneous.
See Kitzmann v. Kitzmann,
ATTORNEY FEES
Lydia requests attorney fees for this appeal under NDCC 14-05-23. We have concurrent authority with the trial court to award fees on appeal and “consider the property owned by each party as a result of the property division, the relative income, whether the property is liquid or of fixed assets, and whether or not the actions of the parties unreasonably increased the time spent on the case.”
Hedin v. Hedin,
As Ted notes on appeal, “perhaps the trial court should have requested and made additional formal findings subsequent to the hearing ... on [Lydia]’s Motion to Amend.” 4 However, the court adopted the correct value of Ted’s pension and its unequal property distribution is sufficiently explained in the record. Ted earned well over half of his pension before marrying Lydia, the source of the pension is a proper consideration, and we are not firmly convinced that the total distribution is inequitable.
We affirm.
Notes
. The present value calculated for Ted's pension did not include this disability portion, as directed by federal law. Originally, 10 U.S.C. § 1408(a)(4) excluded disability pay from the definition of "disposable retired or retainer pay,” that federal law allows to be divided as a marital asset. .Now, as amended, § 1408(a)(4)(C) only excludes disability payments "using the percentage of the member's disability on the date when the member was retired." (Emphasis added). Under this new definition, passed in 1986, any future increase in Ted's disability percentage would not affect the amount of "disposable retired pay” because he has already retired.
. As explained later in this opinion, the actual value of the marital property distributed to Ted was $327,910.18.
. The trial court explained the risks:
[Y]ou are not subjecting the other spouse to the longevity of the person who is getting the pension. ... [I]f he dies tomorrow what is for his estate? Zero.... It is not like a true annuity where the annuity has some value if you die tomorrow.
. For example, the absence of amended findings might suggest that the court improperly excluded the premarital portion of Ted’s pension from the value of the net marital estate.
See Gaulrapp,