Title: RICHARD F. OVERCAST v. BETH OVERCAST

State: wyoming

Issuer: Wyoming Supreme Court

Document:

RICHARD F. OVERCAST v. BETH OVERCAST1989 WY 188780 P.2d 1371Case Number: 89-131Decided: 10/13/1989Supreme Court of Wyoming
RICHARD F. OVERCAST, 
APPELLANT (DEFENDANT),

v.

BETH OVERCAST, APPELLEE 
(PLAINTIFF).

Appeal from the District 
Court, TetonCounty, Elizabeth A. Kail, 
J.

W. Keith Goody 
of Goody and Lubing, Jackson, for appellant.

Phelps H. Swift, 
Jr. of Mullikin, Larson & Swift, Jackson, for appellee.

Before CARDINE, C.J., and THOMAS, URBIGKIT, MACY 
and GOLDEN, JJ.

URBIGKIT, 
Justice.

[¶1.]     Appellant Richard F. 
Overcast challenges his contested divorce decree contending that the business 
property division by required sale is inequitable and an abuse of the trial 
court's discretion. His former wife Beth denies that contention and requests 
this court award her appellate fees and costs. We affirm the trial court's 
decision and deny appellate legal fees.

[¶2.]     At the outset of their 
divorce proceeding, both the Overcasts were employed. Richard had worked three 
years as a construction project manager for Lincoln Property Company, earning 
between $54,000 and $69,000 in each of those years. Beth had been employed as 
the director of the Center Street Gallery in Jackson, Wyoming for nearly a year, receiving a gross 
salary of $2,000 per month. The parties' principal marital debts, other than 
certain minor household and medical bills, consisted of $127,426 remaining on a 
mortgage of the marital residence and a commercial storage unit facility near 
Wilson, Wyoming and about $46,500 in principal and 
unpaid interest on an alleged loan from Richard's parents. Excepting various 
items of household personalty and vehicles, the marital estate was comprised of 
the following major assets:

1. A 50% partnership 
interest in the Center Street Gallery;

2. A promissory note in 
the original principal amount of $20,000 made by the Center Street Gallery to a 
business owned and operated by the Overcasts;

3. A note in the original 
principal amount of $11,000 given in exchange for the sale of real property 
formerly owned by the Overcasts in Pinedale, Wyoming;

4. A promissory note in 
the original principal amount of $89,500 made by Motels of America, Inc. in 
exchange for the sale of commercial property formerly owned by the Overcasts 
south of Jackson, Wyoming; and

5. Real property in 
Wilson, Wyoming consisting of 10.2 acres, the marital 
residence and the Riverwest Storage facility valued at 
$658,000.

[¶3.]     In its decree, the 
trial court awarded the parties equal shares in the amounts owed on the three 
promissory notes. Beth also received full ownership of their combined 
partnership interest in the art gallery, while Richard was required to satisfy, 
in its entirety, any obligation owed to his parents. Additionally, the trial 
court required the Overcasts to sell the Wilson property and evenly split the proceeds 
remaining after satisfying the mortgage debt and any costs associated with 
closing the sale.

[¶4.]     It is the disposition 
of the Wilson 
property that Richard challenges as an abuse of the trial court's discretion in 
dividing the marital estate. He contended in trial court and now for appeal that 
the storage rental units located on that property provide him with his only 
source of income, and that fairness demands the estate be divided to afford him 
the same opportunity as his ex-wife, who retained her employment and partnership 
interests in the gallery, to earn a livelihood from the marital property. He 
therefore claims the trial court abused its discretion by denying him the option 
of some kind of installment purchase of his ex-wife's interest in the Wilson property or, 
alternatively, a permanent arrangement of continued co-ownership.1

[¶5.]     This appeal does not 
test equivalency in divorce property division, but rather fairness in process to 
achieve desired equitability. Paul v. Paul, 616 P.2d 707 (Wyo. 1980). Our 
evaluation of whether the trial court's property division is, in fact, equitable 
must proceed from the perspective of the overall distribution of marital assets 
and liabilities, rather than from a narrow focus on the effects of any 
particular disposition. Klatt v. Klatt, 654 P.2d 733, 735 (Wyo. 1982); Paul, 616 P.2d  at 712. From that perspective, the trial court is afforded considerable 
discretion to frame a distributive scheme appropriate to the peculiar 
circumstances of any individual case. We therefore hesitate to disturb such a 
scheme absent a showing that the trial court clearly abused its discretion. 
Sellers v. Sellers, 775 P.2d 1029, 1030 (Wyo. 
1989); Igo v. Igo, 759 P.2d 1253, 1255 (Wyo. 
1988); David v. David, 724 P.2d 1141, 1142-43 (Wyo. 1986). To constitute an abuse of that 
discretion, the trial court's distribution of the marital property must shock 
the conscience and appear so unfair and inequitable that reasonable persons 
could not abide it. Grosskopf v. Grosskopf, 677 P.2d 814, 820 (Wyo. 1984); Klatt, 654 P.2d  at 735-36. A property division must be based on objective criteria and be 
neither arbitrary nor capricious. Sellers, 775 P.2d  at 1032. Foremost among such 
"objective criteria" are those enumerated statutorily in the following 
manner:

In granting a divorce, 
the court shall make such disposition of the property of the parties as appears 
just and equitable, having regard for the respective merits of the parties and 
the condition in which they will be left 
by the divorce, the party through whom the property was acquired and the burdens imposed upon the property for the 
benefit of either party and children.

W.S. 20-2-114 
(emphasis added). It is fundamental that on appeal, this court does not 
substitute its factual decision for the decision of the trial court with review 
limited to assessment of exercised discretion which is particularly general in 
marital property division. Broadhead v. Broadhead, 737 P.2d 731 (Wyo. 1987); Kane v. Kane, 577 P.2d 172 (1978), aff'd 616 P.2d 780 (Wyo. 
1980).

[¶6.]     In the present case, 
Richard singles out but one of those criteria to support his argument. That is, 
he asserts the property division effected by the divorce decree will leave him 
without a means to support himself. He also asserts he can no longer work in the 
construction business and the storage business which he counted on to provide 
for his support would be, if sold, no longer available. The record does not 
support his assertions. The record indicates, instead, that Richard is 
fifty-two-years old with considerable experience in the construction industry 
and that he quit his latest, highly paid job as a project manager shortly before 
trial for personal reasons. Additionally, he presented no evidence that he could 
not become similarly employed in the future. His claims to the contrary are 
supported by nothing more than his own speculative and questionable 
conclusions.

[¶7.]     Richard's claim that 
the storage business could provide sufficient income both to support him and to 
permit him to contemporaneously purchase his ex-wife's interest in the property 
is, likewise, controverted. He presented no evidence that he could obtain the 
financing for such a buy-out based solely on the income derived from the storage 
business. To the contrary, his own testimony indicates the business could not 
support any further debt. After deducting mortgage payments and ordinary 
business expenses from the gross income produced by the business, but without 
consideration of the debt to Richard's parents which is allegedly chargeable to 
the business, Richard's calculations indicate a positive cash flow of only $700 
per month.

[¶8.]     Supplementing these 
unsupported arguments, Richard suggested at trial that it would be unwise to 
sell the Wilson 
property at that time due to a potential $86,000 tax burden on the sale. In 
support of that suggestion, he introduced testimony hypothesizing that, if the 
proposed sale was postponed for at least three years, to when he reached the age 
of fifty-five, the parties could apply against that tax burden both a $42,000 
once-in-a-lifetime exclusion and a carryover deduction of approximately $6,000 
for a pre-existing capital loss. He claimed, therefore, that it would not be in 
the best interests of either party to order an immediate 
sale.

[¶9.]     Notwithstanding that 
Richard's contemplation of the benefits of a postponed sale belies his asserted 
motive for seeking sole ownership of the property, we do not think that his 
claim in this regard requires disposition of the property by any means other 
than that ordered by the trial court. As the record here indicates, the 
potential tax benefits were largely dependent upon the outcome of an Internal 
Revenue Service evaluation of the status of the carryover deduction and upon 
whether changes in the treatment of capital gains, then contemplated by 
Congress, would occur by the time of the sale. Had Richard been permitted to buy 
out his ex-wife's interest, fairness would have demanded that she share the 
benefits of any future deductions, no matter how tenuous they then appeared. To 
achieve such a result would have required the trial court to engage in pure 
speculation both as to the existence and the amount of those benefits. On the 
other hand, had the trial court postponed the sale of the property in the 
interest of certainty, it would necessarily have had to make some provision for 
the parties to share the proceeds of the business in the interim. The record in 
this case indicates that any orderly disposition of such proceeds would be 
unlikely without constant supervision by the trial court. Even if that were not 
the case, the trial court would have been required to gamble on the continuation 
of a strong property market in Jackson and that the delay would not, therefore, 
adversely affect the market value of the property. Stargazing is not a proper 
requisite of the trial court's discretionary authority. Broadhead, 737 P.2d 731; 
Kane, 577 P.2d 172.

[¶10.]  Neither would it be proper to require the 
trial court, in the exercise of its discretion, to needlessly postpone the 
severance presumably desired by divorcing parties. If the sale of the Overcasts' 
property were to be delayed, both the postponed sale and the division of interim 
profits would stand in the way of that severance. Alternatively, Richard's 
failure to establish his ability to obtain financing for a cash buy-out suggests 
that, if he were permitted to retain the property, the parties would be 
similarly restrained from such severance by some sort of installment purchase 
plan. We have noted that a divorce, insofar as it is possible, should sever the 
parties' ties and permit them to start their separate lives anew. Sellers, 775 P.2d  at 1032. A trial court should, therefore, bear in mind that those parties 
are best served if the decree is as complete and as determinative as possible 
and if, in crafting a property division, the trial court has avoided such 
remedies as force a continued relation between the estranged couple. Broadhead, 
737 P.2d  at 738-39. We also note the observations of one commentator on this 
issue:

As a general rule, courts 
attempt to divide the property in such a manner as to avoid continued litigation 
over it and on-going financial interaction between the parties. Tenancies in 
common are acceptable only in exceptional circumstances. The reasons for this 
are both social and economic. The goal of the divorce court is to put the 
bitterness of marriage at an end, at least in terms of further litigation. In 
addition, it is generally in the financial interests of the parties to separate 
them in the management of income-producing properties. It makes no business 
sense to endanger the operation of such assets simply in order to give both 
spouses an ownership interest.

L. Golden, 
Equitable Distribution of Property § 8.08 at 248 (1983) (footnotes omitted). See 
also Horel v. Horel, 260 Wis. 336, 50 N.W.2d 673 (1952) and 2 W. 
Nelson, Divorce and Annulment § 14.138 at 190 (2d ed. 1961). While none of the 
alternatives offered by Richard to the trial court's treatment of the Wilson property entail any 
permanent co-ownership of the property, they all require potentially acrimonious 
financial interactions between the Overcasts. Co-ownership for any period of 
time may be neither practical nor equitable. Horel, 50 N.W.2d 673. The 
likelihood of continued disagreement between the parties and the possibility of 
eventual detriment to the value of the property cautions us against any 
appellate action limiting the discretion of the trial court which might require 
action to postpone in any manner the division of this property. In present 
consideration, we only assess abuse of discretion. Goss v. Goss, 780 P.2d 306 
(Wyo. 1989); 
Klatt, 654 P.2d 733.

[¶11.]  The trial court's solution is consistent 
with this conclusion and altogether reasonable within both the facts of this 
case and our relevant precedent. In finding the trial court did not abuse its 
discretion, we affirm. At the same time, we decline to find unreasonable cause 
for the appeal which would be required in order to justify the award of 
attorney's fees under W.R.A.P. 10.05.

[¶12.]  Affirmed; regular costs awarded; 
attorney's fees for appeal denied.

FOOTNOTES

1 It is not completely 
clear in comparison of trial testimony and oral argument with Richard's brief 
what he contends the trial court should have done as a permanent resolution of 
the co-ownership of the Wilson property. Obviously, the choices were 
permanent co-ownership, installment buy-out or present buy-out. Likewise, it is 
apparent that if Richard is in a position to buy out in a lump sum at the 
present time, the appeal was unnecessary since he could have bid and purchased 
the property by paying half of its value as the fair market value. Undoubtedly, 
the trial court would have permitted Richard to match any bona fide purchase 
offer as a co-owner if he was able to meet its terms. The evidence does not 
reveal a present existence of cash flow which could have funded a cash buy-out 
loan or necessarily covered a reasonably short-term amortized payment 
arrangement. A subtle change in perspective seems to have occurred between trial 
and the filing of his appellate brief where at least in the latter regard, it is 
clear that "manageability" involved a possible twenty-year 
note.