Court Opinion

ID: 9573747
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 20:58:26.496314+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:43:15.469021
License: Public Domain

Williams, J.
(dissenting). Neither the trial court nor the Court of Appeals cited the statutes relevant to disposition of that part of the property settlement in this case resulting from the wife’s inheritance.
The married women’s act provides:
"That the real and personal estate of every female, acquired before marriage, and all property, real and personal, to which she may afterwards become entitled by gift, grant, inheritance, devise, or in any other manner, shall be and remain the estate and property of such female, and shall not be liable for the debts, obligations and engagements of her husband * * * .” MCLA 557.1; MSA 26.161.
The pertinent language of the divorce statute requires:
"The several circuit courts of the state of Michigan, sitting in chancery, may include in any decree of divorce, or for separate maintenance, entered therein appropriate provisions awarding to the husband all of the property, either real or personal, owned by the wife, or such portion thereof as may appear to the court to be equitable under all the circumstances of the case, provided it shall have been made to appear from the *101evidence therein that the husband contributed to the acquisition, improvement or accumulation of such property. ” (Emphasis added.) MCLA 552.401; MSA 25.136.
There was, of course, no evidence that defendant husband "contributed to the acquisition, improvement or accumulation” of plaintiff wife’s property that resulted from her separate inheritance.
Of the $55,000 plaintiff-appellant inherited during the marriage, $17,975 were spent on untraceable family expenses. Of the remainder, $9,525 was a down payment for the purchase of real property in Illinois, which was later sold, and the proceeds used for the purchase of the marital home in Michigan. $2,500 was spent to prepare that home for sale during the pendency of the divorce. She claims this $12,025 in traceable assets, in addition to the $25,000 balance of her inheritance, should be awarded to her. This position is supported by both case law and statute.
In Johnson v Johnson, 346 Mich 418, 423, 430; 78 NW2d 216 (1956), we affirmed without comment the trial court’s return to the wife of $1,200 of her inheritance which she had expended in improving the marital property.
In reviewing the chancellor’s division of property, the Court of Appeals in Hostetler v Hostetler, 46 Mich App 724, 727; 208 NW2d 596 (1973), not only considered the wife’s contribution of her inheritance and a personal loan to her from her mother as an amount which still belonged to her alone, it also took into consideration the appreciation of the value of the real estate purchased with those funds in computing the value of plaintiff wife’s share.
Even more directly, the Court of Appeals in a per curiam opinion, with Judge, now Justice, Fitzgerald as a member of the panel, upheld an *102award in Czuhai v Czuhai, 30 Mich App 208, 210-211; 186 NW2d 32 (1971), in which traceable earnings of plaintiff wife used as a down payment for the marital residence, and which were earned during the marriage, were given to plaintiff before the division of marital property.
Construing MCLA 552.19; MSA 25.99,1 and MCLA 552.401, the Court of Appeals in Czuhai held that "the court may grant to the wife her separate estates, or may grant to the husband some portion of it, provided the husband can show he contributed to its acquisition”. 30 Mich App 210.
The logic of this applies as well to money expended by the wife from her own inheritance, which, since the married women’s act, is as much her separate estate as her own earnings.
My colleagues rightly note that the Legislature has also provided MCLA 552.23; MSA 25.103 as further guidance to the trial court in its exercise of discretion in making a property award. That statute permits the court to award
"to either party such part of the real and personal estate of either party and such alimony out of the estate real and personal, to be paid to either party in gross or otherwise as it shall deem just and reasonable, having regard to the ability of either party and the character and situation of the parties, and all other circumstances of the case.”
The trial judge, therefore, in construing all relevant statutes must find:
*103(1) The wife’s inherited estate is her own property. MCLA 557.1.
(2) The only property of the wife which may be awarded to the husband in a decree of divorce is that in which "the husband contributed to the acquisition, improvement or accumulation of such property”. MCLA 552.401.
(3) Such property may be awarded to the husband when, in the discretion of the court, the award would be otherwise insufficient for support and maintenance of himself and children who may be in his custody. MCLA 552.401 and MCLA 552.23.
It is elementary law, that, wherever possible, statutes bearing on the same subject should be construed together to give meaning to all. MCLA 552.23 permits the circuit court under appropriate circumstances to award "to either party such part of the real and personal estate of either party”. However, what "real and personal estate” may be awarded is illuminated in other provisions, notably MCLA 552.401 and MCLA 557.1. The former permits the wife’s property to which the husband has contributed to be awarded to the husband under appropriate circumstances. The latter, however, positively provides that property acquired before marriage or received afterwards "by gift, grant, inheritance, devise” etc. "shall be and remain the property of such female”.
MCLA 552.23 properly construed cannot apply to property acquired by inheritance, or by means of funds acquired by inheritance. Defendant husband in no way contributed to the acquisition of such inherited funds. In conformance with these statutes, plaintiff, quite properly, is not claiming that portion of the property attributable to her husband’s payment of home expenses, but only *104portion of the purchase to which she alone contributed.
We would find, therefore, that an appropriate property division, construing the relevant statutes together, as we must, would include in an award to plaintiff the $12,025 in traceable funds she contributed from her inheritance to spend for real estate and to repair the marital home, as well as the approximately $25,000 remaining from her inheritance. Our Legislature has decreed that these amounts should not be part of the joint property.
I would reverse the trial court and the Court of Appeals and remand to the trial court for further action not inconsistent with this opinion.

 The statute provides, in pertinent part, "[T]he court may * * * restorfe] to either party the whole, or such parts as it shall deem just and reasonable, of the real and personal estate that shall have come to either party by reason of the marriage, or * * * award * * * to either party the value thereof * * * ”. Further authority was found in MCLA 557.11; MSA 26.171, giving a married woman the right to retain and dispose of her own earnings acquired during the marriage.