Opinion ID: 2513883
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Dolores's Cross-Appeal

Text: In her cross-appeal, Dolores asserts that a Helio airplane engine, a Chevrolet van, and a Saab vehicle retained by James were erroneously unaccounted for by the trial court in the property division. James responds that Dolores failed to raise this issue below. The record supports James's position. None of the disputed items appeared among the marital assets listed in either Dolores's pretrial financial declaration or her trial brief. Furthermore, in her closing argument Dolores stated that she was not contesting various items of personal property that James was keeping. Dolores did make some note of the three disputed items in attachments to her responses to James's post-trial motion for relief from judgment. But she listed the items only to support her position that the court should refrain from altering its original distribution. Indeed, Dolores expressly maintained that the only additional asset the court should consider was a recent $30,000 payment that the parties had received from the sale of some real property. We have previously recognized that all the marital property to be divided in a divorce proceeding must be called to the trial court's attention. [26] Because Dolores failed to identify the Helio engine, Chevrolet van, or Saab as marital assets subject to division by the superior court, we conclude that she has not preserved her claims to those items for purposes of appeal. [27]
After concluding that James's Kennicott stock was marital, the trial court calculated the net proceeds from the stock's sale and awarded them to Dolores as part of her half of the marital property. By the time the court entered its final order, James had already paid Dolores $353,000 from the sale proceeds; deducting that payment from the total net proceeds, the court found that James owed Dolores an additional $206,604 and ordered him to pay her that sum. James moved for reconsideration and relief from the judgment, claiming that the remaining sale proceeds no longer existed because he had used them to pay marital expenses after the couple's separation. The trial court reopened the evidence, asked for an additional deposition of James, and held two evidentiary hearings concerning the alleged post-separation expenditures. After considering the new evidence, the court amended its original distribution to conform to James's accounting  essentially finding that James's post-separation payments of marital expenses had exhausted his remaining Kennicott proceeds, leaving nothing to divide between the parties. After adjusting for some smaller errors and omissions that are irrelevant here, the court recalculated the total marital estate and redivided it evenly. Dolores now challenges the court's characterization of James's post-separation expenditures as payments for marital expenses, insisting that James spent most of the disputed funds for non-marital purposes. But as the superior court correctly recognized, Dolores did not challenge James's deposition testimony concerning the amounts or purposes of his post-trial expenses. Accordingly, the record supports the court's finding in this regard. Dolores alternatively asserts that James's post-separation expenses should not be treated as having been paid out of marital funds. Instead, she maintains, the parties' separation date should be used to classify these expenditures, since James had complete control over all the property and money after separation and could do whatever he wanted with both. But our case law establishes that marital assets should usually be valued as of the date of trial and that neither party is charged for loss in the value of marital property occurring in the interim between separation and trial. [28] We have held that in special circumstances, [w]here there is evidence that a marital asset was dissipated, wasted, or converted to a non-marital form, the court can `recapture' the asset by giving it an earlier valuation date and crediting all or part of it to the account of the party who controlled the asset. [29] Yet the record in this case reveals no obvious dissipation, waste, or conversion of any marital assets by James. Dolores nonetheless argues that James expended some $200,000 of the Kennicott proceeds on the Stony River Lodge and its related guiding business, knowing that these marital assets would ultimately be awarded to him. [30] In effect, then, she reasons, the court allowed James to convert marital propertythe Kennicott proceedsto separate property without charging him for the conversion. But the record establishes that Dolores did not specifically argue this theory of recapture below, and the trial court had no occasion to consider it. Moreover, Dolores's recapture argument presumes that the Kennicott stock proceeds were marital property. In light of our decision to remand for reconsideration of the court's finding that the proceeds were marital, the recapture issue may ultimately prove academic. In any event, Dolores will now be able to advance her theory of recapture to the trial court on remand. [31] Accordingly, we find no need to resolve the recapture issue here.
Dolores's last argument is that the trial court abused its discretion by refusing to award her attorney's fees. She points out that she is in poor health and has no earning capacity, while James is in good health and has several ready sources of income. Attorney's fees in divorce proceedings are governed by AS 25.24.140, [32] which requires the trial court to base its award primarily on the relative economic situations and earning powers of the parties. [33] Because this provision is designed to allow divorcing parties to litigate on an equal plane, [34] we have held that an award of fees will generally be required only to the economically disadvantaged divorce litigant. [35] More specifically, we have held that a trial court may properly decline to award fees even when one spouse earns significantly less than the other, as long as both parties' resources are sufficient for the superior court to reasonably expect [them] to pay [their] own fees. [36] Here, the trial court found that its overall property distribution left James and Dolores in relatively equal economic situations with respect to their ability to pay their own fees. More particularly, the superior court reasoned that an award of fees was unnecessary because the estate was large, both parties had received income-producing properties, and each had sufficient liquidity. The record supports these findings and establishes that the court's ruling fell within the bounds of its broad discretion. [37]