Source: https://familylaw.typepad.com/virginiafamilylawappeals/property_division/
Timestamp: 2019-04-25 06:56:38+00:00

Document:
The Court of Appeals upheld a post-decree order letting a man transfer parts of an IRA and a 401(k) to satisfy a monetary award under Code § 20-107.3(D) in Johnson v. Johnson, 56 Va. App. 511, 694 S.E.2d 797 (2010). He had been ordered to pay $1.2 million in ten equal, annual installments, and said he had no other way to pay the $120,000 that had come due. Wife had a tax expert testify that if she cashed out the $120,000 in retirement funds after receiving them, she would only have $60,736 after taxes and early withdrawal penalties.
The trial court had the discretion to approve this particular property transfer, and to justify it by interpreting what it had intended in the original award, the Court said.
And when I ordered that in this case the award could be satisfied by the transfer of property, I think that intended to mean the value of the property. It was $120,000. What she decides to do with it is up to her. And I don't think the Court should take any consideration of the fact that she's going to say she wants to cash out.
Essentially, it seems that this is considered an exercise of the broad discretion that Code § 20-107.3(D) gave the trial judge. I think the trial judge and Court of Appeals understood very well the difference that it made, but the trial judge had the discretion to decide what was equitable in the circumstances. The trial judge may have been saying that at the time of the original award, he was basing the award on pre-tax assets and intended all along to divide that, not post-tax dollars. But not necessarily.
How can divorce court hold a money judgment debtor in contempt? Let us count the ways!
An opinion reiterating a simple rule that everyone knows, against a stubborn and wrongheaded appellant, is generally the kind of opinion that should be unpublished. But in Kahn v. McNicholas (1/31/17), the Court of Appeals publishes such a case to remind us WHY anything in a divorce decree can be enforced via contempt-of-court, and not just by the methods used to enforce money judgments in non-family cases. It cites the universally used language of Virginia divorce decrees in cases with agreements, and several statutes we take so much for granted that we have mostly forgotten where they are.
§ 20-109.1. Affirmation, ratification and incorporation by reference in decree of agreement between parties. ... Where the court affirms, ratifies and incorporates by reference in its decree such agreement or provision thereof, it shall be deemed for all purposes to be a term of the decree, and enforceable in the same manner as any provision of such decree.
"... the court has the power to grant a monetary award, payable either in a lump sum or over a period of time in fixed amounts, to either party. ... An award entered pursuant to this subsection shall constitute a judgment within the meaning of § 8.01-426 and shall not be docketed by the clerk unless the decree so directs. An award entered pursuant to this subsection may be enforceable in the same manner as any other money judgment. ..."
The case law Kahn relied on was from before subsection K(2) was enacted, and the Court was not persuaded by it. It pointed out that people in Kahn's position are rightly subject not only to enforcement of a money judgment, but to additional punishment for the separate, serious offense of willfully disobeying a court order.

References: § 20
 v. 
 § 20
 v. 

§ 20
 § 8