Opinion ID: 2196616
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: The Personalty Award

Text: Ronald next asserts that the magistrate's decision to allow the parties to retain the personal property possessed by each respectively at time of trial was erroneous. He contends that the magistrate's decision failed to take into account substantial amounts of jewelry possessed by Bernadine. Ronald argues that the magistrate's decision necessarily indicates that he did not accord any value to those items for purposes of calculating the marital estate, but rather simply treated them as de minimis assets. We reject Ronald's contention. In his decision, the magistrate held in part that [t]he Plaintiff and the Defendant may retain the household, furniture, furnishings, and effects in the home awarded to each. All of the personalty, jewelry, furs and personal [ sic ] not mentioned by be retained [ sic ] by the possessor. As discussed above, the trial record reveals that the magistrate carefully and conscientiously applied the statutory elements set forth in §15-5-16.1 in arriving at his decision. Although the magistrate did not purport to expressly value each and every item constituting the above described personal property, such as Bernadine's jewelry, we believe that because he did adequately apply the pertinent statutory factors in determining the equitable distribution of the marital estate as a whole, his decision concerning this particular subset of the marital estate does not amount to clear error. As long as this Court is able to review a lower court's decision and to determine therefrom that all the necessary facts and statutory factors were considered, we shall not require that court to explain its considerations in a particular or a single [prescribed] manner. Gervais, 688 A.2d at 1308. Thus, we conclude that the magistrate's decision to let the parties retain their personal property was proper, and reflects a proper exercise of his discretion and is adequately supported by the record before us.