Opinion ID: 2271826
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 6

Heading: Tuition Refund

Text: One of the parties' three sons attended Vanderbilt University in Tennessee in September 1997. Although the parties previously had paid such obligations from joint assets, Dorothy prevailed on Andrew to take out a loan in his name to pay for the Vanderbilt tuition. In late October 1997, their son withdrew from the university because of an illness. As a result, the trial justice found that the university made a partial refund of the tuition to Dorothy, despite Andrew's having obligated himself through the loan. Dorothy testified that she did not recall receiving the refund, nor did she recall its amount. According to Andrew, the amount refunded was about $15,000. The trial justice found that the rebate of the tuition payment more properly should have gone to Andrew. However, she ruled that the amount of the refund would be deducted from Dorothy's share of the marital estate only if Andrew could determine the exact amount of the monies received by Dorothy. Andrew contends that this was error, and that the trial justice should have required Dorothy to reimburse Andrew for half of his obligation on the debt because she caused the debt and prevented him from reducing the loan balance with the refund. Alternatively, Andrew argues that the trial justice unfairly allocated the burden of determining the exact amount of the refund to Andrew instead of to Dorothy, who received it. In our view, the trial justice did not abuse her discretion, because there simply was insufficient evidence presented at trial from which the trial justice could have made the distribution that Andrew argues would have been most proper. Therefore, a review of the record reveals that the trial justice did not overlook [ ] salient uncontradicted evidence in determining the amount of assets to be distributed. Ruffel, 900 A.2d at 1184 (quoting Stephenson, 811 A.2d at 1142). We cannot say that the trial justice abused her discretion when she assigned responsibility to satisfy the loan to Andrew, but at the same time required him to prove the amount of the rebate that Dorothy had retained before it could be deducted from Dorothy's share of the marital assets. Andrew had particular incentive during trial to supply specific information about the refund amount so that he could be reimbursed, yet failed to do so. [4] Thus, the trial justice was limited to considering the evidence produced at trial, which consisted of Andrew's mere conjecture that the rebate amounted to $15,000. [5] Nonetheless, the trial justice generously afforded Andrew additional time to prove the amount of the rebate after trial. Therefore, we hold that the trial justice did not overlook or misconceive the evidence available to her, and we decline to disturb this portion of her decision on appeal. 2