Opinion ID: 1781943
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: MARITAL PROPERTY DIVISIONA. Historical Background

Text: States have devised various methods to divide marital assets at divorce, and approaches have usually followed one of three systems. According to Stephen J. Brake, Equitable Distribution vs. Fixed Rules: Marital Property Reform and the Uniform Marital Property Act, 23 B.C.L.Rev., 761, 762 (1982), the separate property system, the equitable distribution system, and a system of fixed rules (community property) are the three systems reflected in American jurisprudence. Id. (citing Foster and Freed, Divorce, note 5, at 4050-51). According to Foster and Freed, Mississippi [1] , Florida, South Carolina, Virginia, and West Virginia previously followed the separate property system, which was a system that merely determined title to the assets and returned that property to the title-holding spouse. Our separate property system at times resulted in unjust distributions, especially involving cases of a traditional family where most property was titled in the husband, leaving a traditional housewife and mother with nothing but a claim for alimony, which often proved unenforceable. In a family where both spouses worked, but the husband's resources were devoted to investments while the wife's earnings were devoted to paying the family expenses or vice versa, the same unfair results ensued. The flaw of the separate property system, however, is not merely that it will occasionally ignore the financial contributions of the non-titleholding spouse. The system ... is also unable to take account of a spouse's non-financial contribution. In the case of many traditional housewives such non-financial contributions are often considerable. [2] Thus, to allow a system of property division to ignore non-financial contributions is to create a likelihood of unjust division of property. See Brake, supra at 765. The non-monetary contributions of a traditional housewife have been acknowledged by this Court, and to some extent, case law has helped lessen the unfairness to a traditional housewife in the division of marital property. [3] The mechanism applied by this Court to prevent unfair division is the resulting trust. Jones v. Jones, 532 So.2d 574, 582 (Miss. 1988) (Prather, J., concurring). Also, this Court has allowed lump sum alimony as an adjustment to property division to prevent unfair division. Reeves v. Reeves, 410 So.2d 1300, 1303 (Miss. 1982); Clark v. Clark, 293 So.2d 447, 449 (Miss. 1974); Jenkins v. Jenkins, 278 So.2d 446, 449 (Miss. 1973). The lump sum award has been described as a method of dividing property under the guise of alimony. Stephen J. Brake, supra at 766. See also, H. Clark, Domestic Relations, § 14.8 at 450 (1976). In Bowe v. Bowe, 557 So.2d 793, 794 (Miss. 1990), this Court acknowledged that a chancellor had the authority and discretion to divide the marital assets by awarding periodic or lump sum alimony, or both, or by dividing the personal property, or awarding the exclusive use and possession of the homestead. Armstrong v. Armstrong, 618 So.2d 1278, 1280 (Miss. 1993). The full development of our jurisprudence in this arena culminated in Draper v. Draper, 627 So.2d 302, 305 (Miss. 1993), in which this Court abandoned the prohibition against the chancery court's divestment of title to real property, which was the last vestige of the separate property method of distribution of marital assets. Thus, through an evolution of case law, this Court has abandoned the title theory method of distribution of marital assets and evolved into an equitable distribution system. [4]