Court Opinion

ID: 9852366
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-24 05:29:12.711456+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:22:26.607829
License: Public Domain

Carley, Justice,
concurring in part and dissenting in part.
I concur in Division 1 of the majority opinion, holding that the term “publicly traded stock” refers only to those securities held in the “public accounts” enumerated in the parties’ Memorandum of Settle*364ment. However, I do not agree with Division 2, wherein the majority concludes that the document is a legally enforceable final agreement. In my opinion, it is only an incomplete “agreement to agree” and, as such, cannot be enforced. Therefore, I dissent to the affirmance of the trial court’s order upholding the validity of the Memorandum as a final enforceable contract.
No settlement agreement can exist until both parties have agreed on all of the essential terms, “and the failure to agree to even one essential term means there is ‘no agreement to be enforced!.]’ [Cit.]” Reichard v. Reichard, 262 Ga. 561, 564 (2) (423 SE2d 241) (1992). Although the Memorandum does provide generally for an equal division of the stocks based upon their after-tax value, it does not purport to indicate which specific securities will be retained by Mr. Kreimer and which will be transferred to Ms. Kreimer. The majority summarily discounts this omission by concluding that “the decision which particular shares of stock will actually be transferred is a non-essential element of the settlement agreement. . . .” However, the Memorandum does not simply provide for an indiscriminate equal division of the stocks between the two. It expressly states that the “[division [is] to be by mutual agreement.” Surely, if the parties contemplated that the after-tax valuation of the securities was to be the only essential basis for the division, they would not have further stipulated that who would receive which particular stocks would be decided by a future agreement. Obviously, which of the parties will hold what stocks after the divorce was an important enough factor to them that they made that determination a subject for their subsequent mutual agreement.
In Moss v. Moss, 265 Ga. 802 (463 SE2d 9) (1995), this Court unanimously held that the parties’ agreement to a transfer of real property of a specified value was unenforceable as a final settlement because the precise method of appraisal was reserved for future agreement. “We cannot agree . . . that the provision regarding the method of appraisal is merely facilitative and is not a substantive term of the agreement. [Cit.]” Moss v. Moss, supra at 803. In this case, the parties agreed to the transfer of a specified after-tax value of the stocks, but reserved for their future agreement the determination of which securities would actually be transferred. Unlike the majority, I cannot see any distinction between the failure to specify the method of real estate appraisal in Moss and the failure in this case to specify which stocks will be transferred and which will be retained. Just as the various appraisal methods rely upon differing factors to value real estate, the final decision over how best to divide stocks equally may include many factors other than their present after-tax valuation. Despite their current equal values, some stocks, because of their perceived capital growth potential or current and *365future dividend yield, may be a more appealing holding for one party than other securities in a portfolio. It appears that, in express recognition of such yet unresolved subjective factors entering into the final selection of securities, the parties reserved their individual right to make a future determination as to that distribution. If they cannot resolve their differences on the impact of such factors and fail to reach a mutual agreement as to the specific division of the stocks, the trial court will not have the authority to make that determination for them, since a
Decided September 17, 2001
Reconsideration denied October 22, 2001.
missing term could not be supplied by the trial court because a divorce “decree should . . . accurately reflect a settlement agreement reached by the parties,” ([cit.]), “and a trial court is not authorized to adopt and incorporate into the final decree and judgment of divorce a purported memo-rialization of the settlement that contains more substantive terms than the settlement.” [Cit.]
Moss v. Moss, supra at 803. See also DeGarmo v. DeGarmo, 269 Ga. 480 (1) (499 SE2d 317) (1998).
The parties themselves did not specify that they were entering into a final settlement agreement. They merely executed a handwritten “Memorandum of Settlement.” A “memorandum” is generally defined as “[a]n informal note or instrument embodying something that the parties desire to fix in memory by the aid of written evidence, or that is to serve as the basis of a future formal contract or deed.” Black’s Law Dictionary, p. 888 (5th ed. 1979). In this document, the parties expressly noted that which stocks would comprise each of their respective half of the after-tax value of the total portfolio remained for their future mutual determination. Therefore, it is clear to me that they did not intend for the Memorandum to constitute the final settlement document, but only to set forth those terms upon which present agreement had been reached and to indicate which terms remained for further resolution. I believe that, under these circumstances, which stocks will be retained and which will be transferred are, as in Moss, substantive, rather than merely facilitative, terms. Because the Memorandum contemplates essential terms to be agreed upon in the future, the trial court erred in enforcing the agreement and, consequently, the majority incorrectly affirms the trial court’s order.
*366Stanley E. Kreimer, Jr, pro se.
Davis, Matthews & Quigley, Elizabeth G. Lindsey, Swertfeger & Wood, L. Jack Swertfeger, Jr, Hugh C. Wood, for appellee.