Case ID: so2d_364/html/1251-02.html
Source: Caselaw Access Project
Author: {"author": "MILLS, Judge. SMITH, Judge,", "license": "Public Domain", "url": "https://static.case.law/"}
Date Created: 2024-08-24T03:29:51.129683

Max H. INGRAM, Appellant, v. Margaret W. INGRAM, Appellee.
    No. JJ-286.
    District Court of Appeal of Florida, First District.
    Nov. 28, 1978.
    Rehearing Denied Dec. 29, 1978.
    
      Donald F. Perrin of Schneider & Dunay, P.A., Jacksonville, for appellant.
    David R. Lewis of Lewis, Paul, Issac & Castillo, P.A., Jacksonville, for appellee.
   MILLS, Judge.

Max H. Ingram appeals from a final judgment of dissolution of marriage on the grounds that he should have been granted a special equity in the marital home. We agree and reverse.

The wife, Margaret W. Ingram, purchased the home approximately ten months prior to the marriage and title was and is solely in her name. During the eight years of marriage, Ingram contributed to a joint account out of which the mortgage payments were made and he paid for or stood jointly responsible for improvements on the home.

We think that under the rationale of Giachetti v. Giachetti, 157 Fla. 259, 25 So.2d 658 (1946); Windham v. Windham, 144 Fla. 563, 198 So. 202 (1940); and Long v. Long, 304 So.2d 483 (Fla. 1st DCA 1974), the evidence demonstrated a special equity in the house for Max Ingram in an amount undetermined and we remand the case to the trial court to set the amount.

Appellee’s request for appellate attorney’s fees is denied.

REVERSED and REMANDED.

BOYER, Acting C. J., concurs.

SMITH, J., dissents.

SMITH, Judge,

dissenting:

The wife bought the house and lot on Lakeview Road before the marriage. It is not clear that her purpose was to provide a marital home. The appellant husband’s claim of entitlement to a “special equity” is predicated on his monetary contributions during the marriage toward mortgage payments, improvements including rewiring, central heat and air conditioning, a new roof, and a new room. During the marriage the wife also contributed financially to household expenses, including the mortgage payment. The house was the marital home for the period of the marriage, from September 1969 until the parties separated in August 1977. The husband’s two daughters by a prior marriage also occupied the house from July 1972 and July 1973, respectively. The wife pleaded a claim for alimony but waived it.

Apparently considering all the equities in the case, including that which the husband characterizes as “special,” the chancellor decided that the wife’s title to the house and lot, contributed to and enjoyed by both parties and by the husband’s daughters during the marriage, should remain in status quo upon its dissolution. I do not doubt that Giachetti, Windham, and Long can in a proper case be extended to recognize a husband’s “special equity” in the wife’s property purchased prior to marriage, though those decisions did not so hold; but I do not think this is such a case, or that this court should here initiate such a remedy. The “special equity” formula is to be applied to achieve equity, not simply to trace monetary contributions for real estate, as distinguished from groceries, to their point of expenditure. The majority implies as much by declining to specify the amount of the husband’s “special equity,” though his expenditures are readily calculable. Whatever equities the husband accumulated by his contributions, I cannot agree that they supervene the wife’s competing, if less “special,” equities. I find no fault with the chancellor’s conclusion that, by whatever doctrine is necessary to the result, the wife should come out of the marriage with the house she brought into it. I would affirm.