Court Opinion

ID: 9602596
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 01:57:24.250945+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T11:08:01.497955
License: Public Domain

Barrow, J.,
dissenting.
Using current values of property to reassess a monetary award after an appeal incorporates the effect of events occurring after the parties have divorced. After a divorce the parties undertake independent lives. Consequently, the circumstances affecting the property and the parties may be quite different from those existing before the divorce. The General Assembly did not intend a monetary award to reflect circumstances existing after a divorce. For this reason, I do not join in the majority’s decision.2
In enacting Code § 20-107.3, the General Assembly recognized “marriage as a partnership to which each party contributes.” Report of the Joint Subcommittee Studying Section 20-107 of the Code of Virginia to the Governor and the General Assembly of Virginia, H. Doc. No. 21, at 7 (1982); see also Williams v. Williams, 4 Va. App. 19, 24, 354 S.E.2d 64, 66 (1987). The value of these contributions prompted the General Assembly to conclude that they “should be *535weighed, along with other factors, in allocating marital assets . . . when [the parties] are divorced.” H. Doc. No. 21, supra, at 7 (emphasis added).
Thus, the General Assembly provided for a monetary award based upon “the equities and the rights and interests of each party in the marital property” and certain enumerated factors, including each party’s contributions to the marital partnership. Code § 20-107.3(D) (emphasis added). By defining marital property as “all property titled in the names of both parties” or “all other property acquired by each party during the marriage which is not separate property,” the General Assembly excluded property acquired outside of the marriage from consideration in arriving at a monetary award. Code § 20-107.3(A)(2) (emphasis added).
The General Assembly’s intent, therefore, was to adjust the equities of the parties in their property based only on the parties’ contributions during the marriage. The General Assembly did not intend to empower courts to continue to adjust the equities of the parties in their property after their marriage was terminated. Revaluing the parties’ assets at current values upon remand following an appeal effectively readjusts the equities of the parties in their property based on values and contributions made after the marriage has ended, a result unintended by the General Assembly.
The character and, consequently, the value of property is rarely static. Its nature and value change because of improvements made to the property, the lack of such improvements, the increase or decrease in the demand for the property, or because of external economic changes. We have recognized the fluctuant nature of property values by requiring that the value of marital assets used in making a monetary award should be determined as close as practicable to the date of trial, as opposed to the date of separation. Mitchell v. Mitchell, 4 Va. App. 113, 118, 355 S.E.2d 18, 21 (1987); Price v. Price, 4 Va. App. 224, 232, 355 S.E.2d 905, 909-10 (1987); see also Aster v. Gross, 7 Va. App. 1, 4-5, 371 S.E.2d 833, 835-36 (1988) (applying this principle to the valuation of pension and profit-sharing plans).
To assert that this holding supports revaluing the assets after an appeal ignores its underlying rationale — under the concept of a marital partnership changes in the value of marital property during a marriage should be recognized in making a monetary award. The converse should apply after a divorce. While the value of property continues to *536change, the absence of a marital partnership demands that a monetary award, based on a marital partnership, should not be affected by changes in value after the termination of the marital partnership.
The principle applicable is different if the property is jointly owned. If property remains jointly owned following a divorce, both parties continue to bear the risk of loss or gain in appreciation and the responsibility for contributing to the maintenance of the property. Such an asset should be revalued upon remand after an appeal, if the property is to then be allocated to one of the parties, because, although the marital partnership has ended, the joint ownership has not ended. Gaynor v. Hird, 11 Va. App. 588, 593, 400 S.E.2d 788, 790-91 (1991). Conversely, individually owned property offers a non-owning spouse neither rights nor responsibilities beyond the monetary award based on the marital partnership. See Code § 20-107.3(B).
Revaluing the assets at current values not only captures non-marital values in the determination of the maritally based monetary award, it also ignores changes that may have occurred in the various factors required to be considered in formulating such an award. The contributions of each party in the care and maintenance of the marital property, the ages, physical and mental condition of the parties, the debts and liabilities of each of the parties, the liquid and non-liquid character of the marital property, and the tax consequences to each party, will all likely have changed following their divorce. In the case before us, the value of the assets have changed, the wife has remarried and has become employed full-time, a child has been emancipated, and the husband has continued his employment as an executive with a closely-held corporation resulting in his acquisition of the significant stock and dividends which are the primary subject of this continued dispute. Revaluing only selected assets in recalculating the monetary award ignores other factors in the calculation which have also changed.
Finally, revaluing the assets departs from the need for finality in litigation and introduces new ambiguities in the law. An appeal that leaves open the future determination of the value of assets leaves the parties in a sea of uncertainty. If one chooses after divorce to sell a marital asset and commingle the proceeds with separate property, is the separate property, or its appreciation, to be classified as marital property upon remand? If a divorced spouse adds improvements to what was before the award marital property, are the improvements, upon remand, to be considered marital property? If a divorced spouse *537uses what was before the award marital assets to send children to college, will these expenditures, upon remand, result in a reduced monetary award? If, on the other hand, a re-evaluation of a monetary award upon remand is based on the value of the assets at the time of divorce, each party to a divorce is assured that his or her financial future is no longer tied to the former spouse. Not having such assurance will surely chill appeals of monetary awards.
To be faithful to the General Assembly’s intent in adopting Code § 20-107.3, upon remand, a monetary award should be redetermined using the values originally determined at the time of divorce. If these values were incorrectly determined, they should be redetermined, as close as practicable, as of the date of divorce. In extraordinary cases, use of the values at the date of divorce may result in an inequitable award upon remand. For example, should one spouse continue to contribute to the maintenance of the other spouse’s individually owned property or should it be determined that the value at the date of divorce was artificially depressed, a trial court may select a more current date for valuing the assets that will produce an equitable monetary award, as indicated by the considerations required by Code § 20-107.3(E). However, if a different date is used, the factors to be considered under Code § 20-107.3(E) should also be reconsidered to reflect any changes occurring between the date of divorce and the new valuation date.
This was not done in this case. Upon remand, the wife sought to have the property valued as of the date of the current hearing and the husband sought to have the property valued as of the date of the original evidentiary hearing. The trial court ordered that the marital property be valued as of the date of the evidentiary hearing to be held by a commissioner, not as of the date of the original hearings. The trial court further ordered the commissioner to hear evidence and report “on the other issues for a determination pursuant to the opinion and holdings of the Court of Appeals.” The commissioner revalued only the wife’s shopping center, the husband’s stock in his employer, and his pension plan. The commissioner then adopted the same formula — twenty-five percent of the husband’s “retirement benefits” that included the stock he had received from his employer’s stock option plan after the divorce — that had been considered in making the original award. The commissioner adopted the same formula because “[t]he Court of Appeals did not alter this position.” The trial court adopted the commissioner’s recommendation and applied the original *538twenty-five percent figure to the new values in determining the new monetary award.
For the reasons I have described, I would reverse the trial court’s monetary award and remand this matter for a redetermination of the monetary award in a manner consistent with the principles expressed in this opinion. Therefore, I dissent from the majority’s decision.

 The majority’s decision is not premised on our panel’s reversal of the parties’ divorce or on requirements governing the evaluation of a pension or other deferred compensation plan. The decision’s rationale applies to any re-evaluation of assets upon a reversal and a remand of a monetary award.