Opinion ID: 2584589
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Insurance payment for damage to privacy fence at Caskill home

Text: A privacy fence at the Caskill property was damaged by wind six months after the parties' date of separation. The Caskill property was a marital asset and the value of the property was awarded to Richard. The insurance payment for the damage was paid to Richard. Richard deposited the payment in a joint account, and then transferred it to his separate account. The trial court awarded half of that amount to Sheila. Richard argues that the date of separation is relevant to when he incurred the expense of the fence repair, and analogizes the situation to case law holding that debt taken on after separation to acquire an asset makes the asset separate. [30] Richard argues that because he will have to bear the cost of repairing the fence, while Sheila will have no obligation to do so, he should have gotten the entire value of the reimbursement. We disagree. Richard is not in debt to anyone or under any obligation to replace the privacy fence. The fence was marital property when destroyed, and both parties suffered the loss of the value of the fence. Moreover, the trial court did not include the fence in the calculation of the value of the home; the court valued the home using Sheila's appraiser's valuation and Richard's list of repairs necessary to bring the home up to code, which did not include the privacy fence. The privacy fence was apparently not taken into account in the appraisal of the Caskill property, because it is not mentioned in the report. The valuation of the Caskill property occurred on June 28, 2007, more than a year after separation and therefore apparently long after the wind damage occurred. And Richard had not repaired the fence as of the trial on September 7, 2007, so clearly it was not repaired before the appraisal. Because both parties owned the fence when it was destroyed, and both shared any resulting loss in the home's value, it was not error for the trial court to classify it as part of the marital estate.