Opinion ID: 895932
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Credit For Premarital Assets

Text: [¶ 14] In seeking a completely equal division of the marital estate, Sheila also challenges the $500,000 credit to Gene for premarital property. We are not persuaded. [¶ 15] In a divorce, all separate property of the spouses must be included in the marital estate for distribution, but the property's origin can be a factor in making an equitable division. Gaulrapp v. Gaulrapp, 510 N.W.2d 620, 621 (N.D.1994). The division need not be equal to be equitable, but a trial court must reasonably explain a substantial disparity. van Oosting v. van Oosting, 521 N.W.2d 93, 96 (N.D.1994); Heley v. Heley, 506 N.W.2d 715, 718 (N.D.1993). In van Oosting, 521 N.W.2d at 99-100, we upheld a comparable distribution that gave one spouse a prior credit for substantial gifts received from his parents that resulted in a net distribution to the other spouse of only twenty-five percent of those gifts. Here, the trial court's relatively modest credit to Gene resulted in an effective distribution to Sheila of the equivalent of nearly thirty-five percent of the value of Gene's premarital assets. [¶ 16] Gene's $500,000 credit came to little more than two percent of this twenty-three-million dollar estate. This relatively small deviation from equal parts was reasonably explained and did not make the 51 percent/49 percent overall division of this relatively large net estate clearly erroneous. [¶ 17] Sheila disputes the valuation of Gene's premarital property, insisting that any valuation of premarital assets [is] speculative at best because a valuation of 30-year-old property necessitates a complex analysis of inflation and other economic influences to determine the value of the property in 1968 dollars, which was not done. However, the evidence sufficiently supported the trial court's finding of the value of Gene's premarital property to justify a $500,000 credit to Gene. As we explained in Wald v. Wald, 556 N.W.2d 291, 295 (N.D.1996), Marital property valuations within the range of the evidence are not clearly erroneous.