Opinion ID: 2635296
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Classifying the Marital Home

Text: Kelly insists that the superior court erred in classifying the parties' residence as marital property. He argues, as he did below, that the loans on the residence were paid off with money from his savings and stock accounts, eighty-nine percent of which can be traced back to his personal injury settlement, which was his separate property. Accordingly, Kelly reasons, eighty-nine percent of the home's equity should have been treated as his separate property. Kelly insists that he never intended to donate any portion of his Subaru settlement funds to the marital estate, and he claims that he used his settlement monies to pay off the mortgages only because he believed it would be a sound investment to park his money in the house instead of investing it in the stock market. Connie responds that [t]he house was acquired as a marital asset and always remained a marital asset. She insists that, even if Kelly did not intend to donate his Subaru settlement funds to the marriage when he originally received them, the funds transmuted [in]to a marital asset when they were used to pay off the house. In ruling on this point, the superior court agreed with Connie's position, expressly rejecting Kelly's theory: The house clearly was marital at the time it was purchased. [Kelly's] argument therefore really is that by paying off the mortgage, the house transmuted largely into his personal property. In addition to noting that it had found no case law to support Kelly's theory of reverse transmutation, the court found that Kelly's actions during the marriage demonstrated that he intended to use the Subaru settlement funds as marital assets: While [Kelly] denied it at trial, the monies used to pay off the loans were contributed to the marriage. The parties were in severe financial straits; the payments resolved many of their financial difficulties. [Kelly] routinely used his personal funds to pay marital expenses, and in this case he used the settlement funds to pay off credit cards. Most important, the house remained titled in both parties' names when they received their new title to the house, and they continued to reside there and to treat the home as their marital residence. Although Kelly adamantly disputes these findings, it is not our role as an appellate court to reweigh the evidence or redetermine disputed factual issues. Whether a spouse's separate property has become marital property through transmutation is an issue of intent. [2] The superior court determines whether this intent exists by examining the parties' words and actions. [3] Whether intent to transmute separate property into marital property exists is an issue of fact. [4] Trial courts exercise broad discretion when dividing marital assets. [5] We review a trial court's decision to classify property as marital only for abuse of discretion; [6] and we review the court's underlying factual findings only for clear error. [7] Here, substantial evidence supports the superior court's findings. Those findings are not clearly erroneous, and our review of the record does not persuade us that the superior court abused its discretion in treating the home as a marital asset.