Opinion ID: 895824
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: money market account

Text: [¶ 10] Bill argues the trial court erred in valuing the money market account for his law office with the value given at trial, rather than at the time of distribution several months later. We recently addressed the timing of valuation of fluctuating assets in Grinaker. In that case, there was a six-month delay between trial and entry of the judgment. The husband sought to introduce evidence that the value of certain mutual funds and annuity accounts had substantially changed since trial. We said: Common sense dictates that marital property be valued as of the date of trial, rather than the date of distribution. The trial court hears the evidence on value at trial, and the evidence will ordinarily give a current value for the property. When valuing items like the mutual funds and variable annuities here, any evidence presented at trial on value for some future date would have been purely speculative. The difficulty with the procedure attempted by Gary in this case is evident. Parties would be free to file further evidence, not subject to cross-examination, whenever they believed a marital asset had changed in value. This procedure would certainly lead to a never-ending trial by affidavit, with parties continually submitting account statements and other materials with each fluctuation of the financial markets. Grinaker, 553 N.W.2d at 208-209. We conclude the trial court's finding on the value of this money market account is not clearly erroneous.