The circuit court dissolved Mr. and Mrs. Walker’s twenty-two year marriage in December 2000. Mrs. Walker challenges many of the financial aspects of the final judgment, including the alimony award, the valuation of a business, and the equitable distribution. We affirm on all issues save one: the court’s finding that loans Mr. Walker received from his business were marital debt for equitable distribution purposes. On that issue we reverse and remand for further proceedings.
Mr. Walker testified that he borrowed between $170,000 and $180,000 from his business to pay litigation expenses and the parties’ living expenses. But he also said that he used the borrowed funds to pay his personal income tax and property taxes. The circuit court made the following findings:
The litigation expenses incurred in this proceeding, and paid by the Husband by taking loans from the business, should be considered as marital expenses subject to equitable distribution for the following reasons:
A. This litigation has been prolonged due to the conduct of the Wife in alienating the minor child.
B. This Court is making an equitable and equal distribution of assets.
C. After equitable distribution and support awards, there will not be a disparity in income between the parties.
D. The Husband does not have the ability to repay the loans to the business.
We also note that on three occasions during the litigation the court entered orders requiring Mr. Walker to pay his wife’s temporary attorney’s fees and costs. These orders were variously entered “without prejudice to either party as to entitlement or reasonableness,” with jurisdiction reserved “to determine whether this advance should be determined to be temporary support to the Wife or assessed against her equitable distribution,” and “without prejudice to the Husband seeking an offset of same in the Court’s final equitable distribution.”
It seems, then, that Mr. Walker put the loan proceeds to a variety of purposes, some of which properly would have been adjusted for in the equitable distribution and some of which would not. For example, to the extent Mr. Walker applied the
On the other hand, the loans would be marital insofar as Mr. Walker applied the proceeds to marital debts or property expenses. See Polley v. Polley,
The problem here is that we are unable to discern how much of the loan proceeds were applied to which purposes. The trial court made no pertinent findings beyond those quoted above, and the evidence did not adequately identify or quantify the various expenditures. Moreover, insofar as Mr. Walker used the loan proceeds to pay his own litigation expenses, treating the loans as marital effectively awarded him half of those expenses. Yet the trial court took no evidence nor made any findings as to their reasonableness. See Chestnutt v. Chestnutt,
Without such factual findings, we cannot ascertain whether the circuit court abused its discretion in this regard. See Wilcox v. Wilcox,
Affirmed in part; reversed in part and remanded.
