Opinion ID: 2514904
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: The Superior Court Divided the Marital Property in a Fair and Equitable Manner.

Text: As support for his argument that the superior court failed to distribute the marital property in an equitable fashion, Charles recites the same allegations listed in his argument that the parties failed to reach a settlement. These allegations fail to advance Charles's claims of inequity for the same reasons that they fail to advance his claim that a settlement was not reached. In his reply brief, Charles declines to address Jacqueline's contention that the disparity between the former spouses' earning capacities might have justified a more favorable division for her. According to Jacqueline, she earns $37,500 as a bus driver in Anchorage, while Charles has earned over $100,000 annually as a contractor in the Middle East. Charles argues that the superior court effectively reversed itself absent [a h]earing and required Mr. Worland in [the] final division of property to make the mortgage payment despite its earlier [o]rder requiring Ms. Worland to do so. But Charles fails to specify which mortgage payments the superior court wrongfully obliged him to pay. The agreement on record assigns responsibility to Jacqueline for the March, April, and May mortgage payments of 2006. The superior court's order did not alter this term, and thus Charles's claim for any relief from mortgage payments apart from those three months must fail. In a similar vein, Charles argues that the superior court abused its discretion by failing to take into account whether credits and offsets should be given for post-separation mortgage payments, and by declining to impute the rental value of Ms. Worland's exclusive use of the marital residence after separation in dividing the marital estate. But the superior court did not abuse its discretion; it simply enforced the terms of the parties' mutually agreed upon settlement. Indeed, none of the cases cited by Charles in support of his argument involved settlement discussions. [16]