Case Name: Richard A. NIX, Appellant, v. Brenda W. NIX, Appellee
Court: Florida District Court of Appeal
Jurisdiction: Florida
Decision Date: 2006-05-03
Citations: 930 So. 2d 711
Docket Number: No. 1D04-4766
Parties: Richard A. NIX, Appellant, v. Brenda W. NIX, Appellee.
Judges: POLSTON, J„ concurs; ERVIN, J„ dissents with opinion.
Reporter: Southern Reporter, Second Series
Volume: 930
Pages: 711–716

Head Matter:
Richard A. NIX, Appellant, v. Brenda W. NIX, Appellee.
No. 1D04-4766.
District Court of Appeal of Florida, First District.
May 3, 2006.
Rehearing Denied June 7, 2006.
Laura E. Keene and Ross A. Keene of Beroset & Keene, Pensacola, for Appellant.
Phillip S. Howell, Galloway, Johnson, Tompkins, Burr & Smith, Gulf Breeze, for Appellee.

Opinion:
ALLEN, J.
The appellant former husband challenges a post-dissolution domestic relations order by which the trial court ordered, in accordance with the pre-judgment stipulation of the parties which was incorporated into the final judgment of dissolution, that the appellee former wife's share of the appellant's defined-benefit State of Florida monthly retirement benefits would be determined pursuant to a specified formula upon commencement of monthly retirement benefit payments. The appellant also challenges the trial court's further order that should the appellant elect to participate in the State of Florida Deferred Retirement Option Plan (DROP), the appellee will be entitled to share in the DROP proceeds because these are retirement benefits. The order additionally directs that the appellee's share of any DROP proceeds, including interest accumulations and cost of living adjustments applicable to her share, should be deposited into a separate account for her benefit and made payable to her upon the appellant's termination of employment. Because valuing the appellee's share of the former appellant's monthly retirement benefits as of the date that retirement benefits begin to be paid is consistent with the formula to which the parties agreed prior to entry of the final judgment of dissolution, and because the trial court correctly recognized and properly effected the appellee's right to equitably share in any DROP proceeds, we affirm the order under review.
The parties' pre-dissolution stipulation was entered into after twenty-seven years and seven months of marriage, with the appellant having been a participant in the State of Florida retirement system throughout this period. The stipulation reflected the parties' agreement that the appellee's share of the appellant's monthly retirement benefits would be determined in accordance with a specified formula upon commencement of payment of retirement benefits by the State of Florida. The final judgment of dissolution incorporated the parties' stipulation by ordering that the appellee's share of the appellant's retirement benefits would be determined in accordance with this previously agreed-upon formula. The parties' stipulation and the final judgment of dissolution express the formula as follows:
x 27 years and 7 months x MONTHLY PYMNT. Number of years of Husband's Employment rH Oj
The appellant acknowledges in his initial brief on appeal that this formula precisely reflects the "deferred-distribution method" formula explained in considerable detail in DeLoach v. DeLoach, 590 So.2d 956 (Fla. 1st DCA 1991), under which the equitable division of retirement benefits is determined when the employer commences payment of retirement benefits. Notwithstanding his admission on this point, however, the appellant argues that the trial court actually intended to determine the appellee's share of the appellant's retirement benefits as of the date on which the petition for dissolution was filed. But a plain reading of the final judgment of dissolution and the accompanying order refutes this contention. Although the trial court identified the date of the filing of the petition for dissolution as the date used to determine the "value of the parties' assets," the court did so only after it had already directed in the preceding paragraph that the appellee's share of the retirement benefit payments would be determined in accordance with the stipulated DeLoach formula. The trial court obviously established the valuation date only to facilitate the subsequent distribution of a variety of assets that were the subject of litigation (not stipulation) between the parties. Nowhere in the final judgment of dissolution or in the accompanying order did the court state that retirement benefits were to be valued on a particular date. Moreover, the very phrasing of the agreed-upon distribution formula confirms that it was intended to be applied only upon receipt of monthly retirement benefit payments. This is made obvious by the formula's specific incorporation of the appellant's then-unknown monthly retirement benefit payment as a factor in its computation.
Relying upon Boyett v. Boyett, 703 So.2d 451 (Fla.1997), the appellant argues that delaying determination of the appellee's share of the appellant's retirement benefits until the payment of retirement benefits begins is inconsistent with Florida law because such delay results in an award to the appellee of retirement benefits which accrue after the dissolution of marriage. But neither Boyett nor any other applicable authority prevents parties to a dissolution action from agreeing that the determination of the parties' respective shares of retirement proceeds will be made pursuant to an agreed-upon formula to be applied once disbursement of retirement proceeds begins.
Even if the methodology applied in Boyett in connection with a contested division of retirement benefits were applicable in the context of a stipulated division, the circumstances involved in Boyett are materially distinguishable from those in the present case. As the supreme court observed in Boyett, valuation of a spouse's interest in a retirement plan is fact-intensive and varies in accordance with the particular circumstances involved. Accordingly, "[n]o recitation of formulae, considered in the abstract, could capture the variety of considerations necessary in order to do equity." Boyett, 703 So.2d at 453 (quoting Diffenderfer v. Diffenderfer, 491 So.2d 265, 269 (Fla.1986)). The most significant distinction between the circumstances in Boyett and those in the present case is that the former husband in Boyett would have been subject to a substantial early retirement penalty had he retired at the time of dissolution, while the appellant in the present case was eligible to retire at the time of dissolution without any early retirement penalty due to the fact that he had by then already accrued more than twenty-five years of creditable service in the Special Risk Class of the Florida Retirement System. The early retirement penalty was a critical consideration in the supreme court's decision in Boyett, and its absence in the present case would make the Boyett approach inequitable here.
In accordance with our decision in Pullo v. Pullo, 926 So.2d 448 (Fla. 1st DCA 2006), we reject the appellant's challenge to the trial court's determination that the appellee will be entitled to an equitable share in any DROP proceeds, with the appellee's share including interest accumulations and cost of living adjustments to her share. As we did in Pullo, we certify the following question to the Supreme Court of Florida as a question of great public importance:
IS A SPOUSE WHO IS AWARDED A PORTION OF THE OTHER SPOUSE'S PENSION AT THE TIME OF DISSOLUTION ENTITLED TO SHARE IN A DROP ACCOUNT CREATED, INCLUDING INTEREST AND COLAS, SOMETIME AFTER THE DISSOLUTION HAS BECOME FINAL?
The order under review is affirmed.
POLSTON, J" concurs; ERVIN, J" dissents with opinion.
. We reject any contention that this issue, raised and argued on its merits, both below and on appeal, is moot.