COURT OF APPEALS OF VIRGINIA 

Present: Judges Coleman, Bumgardner and Lemons 

Argued at Salem, Virginia 

CAROL YOUNG BLANDING 

 MEMORANDUM OPINION* BY 

v. Record No. 1103-98-3 JUDGE RUDOLPH BUMGARDNER, III 

 MARCH 16, 1999 

DONALD SLY BLANDING 

FROM THE CIRCUIT COURT OF ROANOKE COUNTY 

Roy B. Willett, Judge 

 William H. Cleaveland (Rider, Thomas, 

Cleaveland, Ferris & Eakin, P.C., on brief), 

for appellant. 

 Sam Garrison for appellee. 

 

 *Pursuant to Code § 17.1-413, recodifying Code § 17-116.010, 

this opinion is not designated for publication.

 The wife appeals the trial court’s decision to give the 

husband a portion of a brokerage account that she claims was her 

separate property. The husband appeals the decision not to 

allocate to him a larger portion. Concluding that there is 

sufficient evidence in the record to support the decision of the 

trial court, we affirm. 

The trial court found that the disputed brokerage account 

was marital property. It distributed 69% of the account to the 

wife and 31% to the husband, which were different proportions 

than it distributed other marital assets. When explaining its 

decision to treat the account as marital property and divide it 

as it did, the trial court said, "I think that the bulk of that 

[account] is separate property, however, I cannot ignore that he 
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had an inheritance, too, and that is the balance that I have 

reached after listening to all of this." 

 The parties were married in 1978 and separated in 1996. 

When the parties started having marital problems, the wife opened 

a new brokerage account at A.G. Edwards & Sons, Inc. The husband 

never knew about the account, which she held in her name jointly 

with her brother. The brother’s interest was nominal only. The 

statements from that account show an opening deposit of $20,000 

on February 16, 1994. Subsequent deposits of $5,000 each were 

made July 1994, January 1995, and September 1995. At the time of 

separation, the account had a balance of approximately $41,000. 

During the marriage, the wife’s father made periodic cash 

gifts by check. The parties disagreed strongly whether the gifts 

were to the wife alone or to them jointly. The husband testified 

that on many occasions his wife said, "Hey, my father has sent us 

more money." She presented a list of checks received from her 

father and provided copies of many of these checks. Neither the 

list nor the copies included all the checks received from her 

father. He made all checks payable to the wife alone except for 

one in 1986 made payable to both. The wife endorsed the checks 

and deposited them in a joint marital account until she opened 

the A.G. Edwards account. After opening that account, the wife 

deposited all checks received from her father to the account. 

The husband received an inheritance during the marriage. 

The wife testified that they deposited the money, approximately 

$15,000, in a joint Merrill Lynch Ready Assets account and spent 
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it before opening the A.G. Edwards account. Throughout the 

marriage, the wife managed the family’s finances. 

For this appeal, we need not decide whether the gifts were 

to the wife alone. Assuming that they were gifts to her alone, 

she failed to show that the account, which she claims as separate 

property, was established with funds received from her father. 

The gifts from her father were the only source she had of 

separate property. However, the funds used to establish the 

account did not necessarily come from those gifts. 

We review the evidence and all reasonable inferences in the 

light most favorable to the prevailing party below, the husband 

in this instance. See Alphin v. Alphin, 15 Va. App. 395, 399, 

424 S.E.2d 572, 574 (1992). When the wife opened the account, 

she transferred $20,000 by making two separate deposits of $5,000 

and $15,000. The initial deposits do not correlate with the 

receipt of gifts when comparing the receipt of cash gifts with 

the brokerage statement. The wife received only one check for 

$5,000 around the time she opened the account. That sum alone 

could be considered separate property. Though she had received 

more than $20,000 worth of gifts by the time she opened the 

account, all earlier funds had been deposited in joint marital 

accounts and would have become marital property. See Code 

§ 20-107.3(3)(d). She received $15,000 in the eighteen months 

after she established the brokerage account, but the only source 

for the major part of the initial deposit was funds that were 

marital property. Checks received before the brokerage account 
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was opened show the checks were deposited in a checking account 

according to her own notations on the checks. 

Property acquired during a marriage is presumed to be 

marital property. See Code § 20-107.3. The party claiming a 

gift as separate property has the burden of producing credible 

evidence of the donor’s intent to rebut the marital property 

presumption. See Stainback v. Stainback, 11 Va. App. 13, 17-18, 

396 S.E.2d 686, 689 (1990). The evidence the wife presented does 

not establish as a matter of law that she established the account 

using separate property alone. The gifts from her father could 

have been the source, but it is more likely that the initial 

deposit consisted of marital funds. 

The wife claims that she has linked the gifts from her 

father to the brokerage account by showing that all marital funds 

were expended and no funds remained that could have been the 

source except her father’s gifts. Her proof is not so exact; it 

is subject to interpretation and evaluation. The trial court had 

to interpret and evaluate the testimony and the supporting 

documents. Much of the wife’s evidence consisted of her 

explanations and recollections of the financial transactions 

during the marriage. However, she did not support her testimony 

with the kind of precise data that financial transactions 

routinely generate. The trial judge must determine the weight 

and value of her evidence, see Booth v. Booth, 7 Va. App. 22, 28, 

371 S.E.2d 509, 573 (1988), and on appeal we will not reverse 

that determination unless plainly wrong or without evidence to 
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support it. See Matthews v. Matthews, 26 Va. App. 638, 644, 496 

S.E.2d 126, 128 (1998) (citations omitted). The evidence was in 

conflict, there is evidence to support the trial court’s finding, 

and we cannot change it on appeal. See Willis v. Magette, 254 

Va. 198, 491 S.E.2d 735 (1997). The wife failed to prove that 

the account consisted of funds that were her separate property 

alone. 

Both parties complain that the trial court allocated them 

too small a portion of the A.G. Edwards account. The standard of 

review of the trial court's equitable distribution is well 

established. "Unless it appears from the record that the trial 

judge has abused his discretion, that he has not considered or 

has misapplied one of the statutory mandates, or that the 

evidence fails to support the findings of fact underlying his 

resolution of the conflict in the equities, the equitable 

distribution award will not be reversed on appeal." Blank v. 

Blank, 10 Va. App. 1, 9, 389 S.E.2d 723, 727 (1990). We find no 

abuse of discretion in the trial court's method of dividing the 

account. Accordingly, we affirm. 

Affirmed.