Court Opinion

ID: 9901048
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-11-20 22:12:02.90076+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:21:24.760261
License: Public Domain

2023 UT App 86

                THE UTAH COURT OF APPEALS

                        JARED M. KNIGHT,
                            Appellee,
                               v.
                       REBECCA B. KNIGHT,
                           Appellant.

                              Opinion
                         No. 20210080-CA
                       Filed August 10, 2023

           Third District Court, Salt Lake Department
                 The Honorable Robert P. Faust
                          No. 184902185

        Julie J. Nelson, Taylor Webb, and Stephen C. Clark,
                       Attorneys for Appellant
               Bart J. Johnsen and Alan S. Mouritsen,
                        Attorneys for Appellee

  JUDGE DAVID N. MORTENSEN authored this Opinion, in which
     JUDGES RYAN D. TENNEY and AMY J. OLIVER concurred.

MORTENSEN, Judge:

¶1     After a trial on cross-petitions, the district court entered
findings of fact and conclusions of law and a final decree
divorcing Rebecca and Jared Knight. Rebecca 1 appeals several
aspects of the divorce decree, including the court’s determination
that she had no interest in a trust Jared’s father established before
the marriage and several of the court’s calculations related to
alimony. We affirm the district court’s ruling with respect to

1. Because the parties share the same last name, we refer to them
by their first names, with no disrespect intended by the apparent
informality.
                          Knight v. Knight

Jared’s trust, and we affirm in part and reverse in part with
respect to the alimony calculations.

                         BACKGROUND

¶2      In October 1994, Jared’s father, L. Randy Knight, created
the RKF Jared M. Knight Trust (the Trust), an irrevocable trust.
Randy named Jared as the sole beneficiary of the Trust and
transferred a significant interest in RKF, LLC—an Arizona limited
liability company formed in 1994 by Randy—to the Trust. The
trust agreement for the Trust (Trust Agreement) specified that the
Trust would be governed by Arizona law. The Trust Agreement
also contained a “spendthrift provision” declaring that Jared
lacked the “right to assign, transfer, encumber, or hypothecate his
. . . interest in the principal or income of the [T]rust in any
manner.” Additionally, the Trust Agreement granted Jared a
power of withdrawal over the Trust principal such that Jared
could withdraw up to one-fourth of the principal at age 30 (June
2002), up to one-third of the principal at age 35 (June 2007), and
all the principal at age 40 (June 2012). To exercise this power, Jared
would need to make “a request in writing.”

¶3     In October 1995, Jared and Rebecca were married. During
their marriage, the parties enjoyed a lavish lifestyle funded, in
part, by the wealth of Jared’s family.

¶4     In March 2008, Rebecca and Jared executed a “Property
Agreement” (the Property Agreement), which stated, “All
property which is now owned by JARED or by REBECCA,
individually, . . . is hereby declared to be, and hereby is, the
community property of JARED and REBECCA.” The Property
Agreement specified that “to the extent necessary, JARED and
REBECCA each hereby gives, grants, conveys and assigns to the

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                          Knight v. Knight

other an interest in his or her property . . . so as to transmute[2]
such property into the community property of JARED and
REBECCA.” The Property Agreement further declared, “All
property hereafter acquired by JARED and REBECCA, or either
of them, . . . shall be deemed to be, and hereby declared to be, the
community property of JARED and REBECCA.” However, the
Property Agreement carved out an exception: “Notwithstanding
the foregoing, any property received by JARED and REBECCA by
gift or inheritance after the date of this [Property] Agreement shall
be the sole and separate property of the person receiving it, unless
that person declares otherwise in writing.” The Property
Agreement is, like the Trust, governed by Arizona law.

¶5     In 2016, the Trust was decanted 3 into a new trust. The new
trust named Jared as sole initial trustee and therefore permitted
Jared to distribute to himself, “upon his written request, up to the
balance of the principal of his trust at any time.”

¶6     In April 2018, Jared filed for divorce. Rebecca ultimately
filed an amended counterclaim alleging that the principal of the
Trust was marital property and therefore subject to equitable
distribution under the terms of the Property Agreement.

¶7     Jared filed a motion for partial summary judgment on this
point, arguing that the Property Agreement “did not transmute

2. “Transmutation” is a “change in the nature of something;
[especially], in family law, the transformation of separate
property into marital property, or of marital property into
separate property.” Transmutation, Black’s Law Dictionary (11th
ed. 2019).

3. To “decant” is “[t]o distribute (the assets of an irrevocable trust)
to the trustee of a new trust with different provisions, often to
correct drafting errors or to account for new circumstances.”
Decant, Black’s Law Dictionary (11th ed. 2019).

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                          Knight v. Knight

assets held by the [Trust]” into marital property. Jared asserted
that the Property Agreement did not apply to the Trust because,
at the time he entered into the Property Agreement, he did not
own the Trust principal under Arizona law. He pointed to the
statute in effect in 2008—the year the parties entered into the
Property Agreement—which stated that “if the trust instrument
provides that a beneficiary’s interest in principal is not subject to
voluntary or involuntary transfer, the beneficiary’s interest in
principal shall not be transferred.” Ariz. Rev. Stat. Ann. § 14-
7702(a) (2008). The statute further specified that a court may not
order the satisfaction of a money judgment against a beneficiary
until “[a]fter an amount of principal becomes immediately due
and payable to the beneficiary.” Id. § 14-7702(b). It explained that
“[i]f an amount of principal is due and payable only at a future
date, or only on the occurrence of a future event, whether the
occurrence of that event is within the control of the beneficiary,
the amount of the principal is not immediately due and payable
to the beneficiary.” Id. Jared asserted that the Trust’s
“disbursement mechanism squarely fit[] within the framework of
Arizona Revised Statute Section 14-7702(B) as it was written in
2008” because the Trust’s requirement that Jared submit a written
request for disbursement of the Trust principal rendered the
principal “not immediately due and payable.” See id. And Jared
argued that, because he never submitted a written disbursement
request or withdrew any principal of the Trust, “[a]s a matter of
Arizona law as it existed at the time that the Property Agreement
was executed in 2008, no amount of the Trust principal is ‘now
owned’ or ‘hereafter acquired’” by Jared, so the Property
Agreement did not apply to the Trust.

¶8     Rebecca opposed Jared’s motion and filed her own motion
for partial summary judgment. Rebecca argued that Jared’s
beneficial interest in the Trust was a property interest that Jared
owned at the time of the Property Agreement. She also asserted
that Jared’s power of withdrawal gave him an ownership interest
in the Trust principal that he was eligible to withdraw as of the

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                          Knight v. Knight

date of the Property Agreement. She said, “Consistent with the
common understanding of ‘property’ as comprising a set of rights
(a ‘bundle of sticks’ in the law-school formulation), if among those
rights a person has the right to control the disposition of an asset,
that asset is his property, and he has ownership of the property.”
Rebecca further avowed that “[t]he Arizona statute on which
Jared relies . . . has nothing to do with the question before this
[c]ourt” because it applies to “the rights of ‘creditors’ to access
property held in trust for a beneficiary when the trust features a
‘spendthrift’ clause” and Rebecca was not a creditor. Accordingly,
Rebecca claimed that the Trust’s spendthrift clause “did not limit
Jared’s ability to transmute his property interest in the Trust or its
underlying assets into community property, and he plainly did so
by signing the Property Agreement.” Rebecca argued that the
Restatement (Third) of Trusts instead applied and made it “clear
that trust assets subject to an exercisable power of withdrawal are
‘property.’” (Citing Restatement (Third) of Trusts § 56 cmt. b.
(Am. L. Inst. 2003) (“Trust property subject to a presently
exercisable general power of appointment (a power by which the
property may be appointed to the donee, including one in the
form of a power of withdrawal), because of the power’s
equivalence to ownership, is treated as property of the donee.”
(emphasis added))).

¶9     The court denied Rebecca’s motion for partial summary
judgment and granted Jared’s. The court reasoned that “the legal
position taken in [t]he Restatement (Third) of Trusts § 56 was not
the law in Arizona until 2009, when it [was] partially codified as
part of the Arizona Trust Code,” and it rejected Rebecca’s
argument that “the spendthrift clause specifically disengages for
purposes of the exercise of a power of withdrawal [and] expressly
allows a trustee to transfer withdrawn property to a beneficiary.”
The court determined, instead, that Arizona Revised Statutes
section 14-7702 applied because—regardless of whether Rebecca
was a “creditor”—“that statute . . . define[d] when an amount is
due and payable and separately define[d] the rights of creditors.”

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                          Knight v. Knight

Accordingly, the court concluded that “[n]o amount of the Trust
principal is due or payable within the meaning of that statute, and
it is therefore protected against . . . the disbursement sought by
[Rebecca].” The court thus ruled that because Jared’s interest in
the Trust principal was “not subject to voluntary or involuntary
transfer,” see Ariz. Rev. Stat. Ann. § 14-7702(a) (2008), it could not
be transferred through the Property Agreement.

¶10 The parties then proceeded to trial on the other issues
involved in their divorce, including distribution of the marital
estate and alimony. The district court entered its order, later
entering its findings of fact and conclusions of law and issuing the
divorce decree. As relevant to this appeal, in its alimony
calculations, the court made several reductions to Rebecca’s
claimed expenses.

¶11 First, the court made several modifications to the expenses
Rebecca submitted related to home maintenance. The court
eliminated the snow removal expense of $175 per month, stating,
“The parties never paid for snow removal during the marriage[,]
and this expense was not part of the marital [lifestyle].” It
eliminated the monthly “[p]ool/[s]pa maintenance” expense of
$373.33, reasoning that “[t]he parties did not have pool
maintenance expense[s] during the marriage as the pool was
maintained by the parties” and “[t]his new expense was only
incurred after separation and because [Rebecca] is not cleaning
the pool despite acknowledging she is capable of doing so.” And
it eliminated the monthly landscaping expense of $414.66 because
“[t]his was not an expense that was incurred during the marriage
as the yard work was done by the parties themselves.” It
continued, “[Rebecca] further acknowledged that she is capable
of yard work. Also, [Jared] has not requested that he [have] third
parties do his yard maintenance.”

¶12 Next, the district court modified several of Rebecca’s
expenses related to health and personal care. It reduced Rebecca’s

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                        Knight v. Knight

health care insurance expense from $757 per month to $411 per
month, explaining,

      [Rebecca] is not incurring this expense but is
      covered under the parties’ current policy. In
      addition, no written evidence was provided as to
      the costs for health care coverage for [Rebecca].
      [Rebecca] acknowledged the $757 was for a policy
      with no deductibles[,] which is not the same level of
      policy the parties currently have in place, which has
      [an] $8,000 a year deductible. Further, the [c]ourt
      has received evidence in other cases that health care
      coverage for a single person can be obtained in the
      $400 to $500 a month range. Therefore, the [c]ourt
      adjusts [Rebecca’s] coverage to be consistent with
      [the] current known expense of health care of the
      parties and which [Jared] established at $411 a
      month.

The court also reduced Rebecca’s expense for personal grooming
from $949.83 per month to $500 a month. It stated,

      [Rebecca’s] evidence of getting a haircut twice a
      year and having her nails and eye lashes done
      monthly to every six (6) weeks did not establish this
      claimed and requested expense of $11,397.96 a year
      for personal expenses. [Jared] did not ask for any
      personal grooming as part of his expenses relating
      to the marital standard of living[,] and he [is] not
      getting the $500 [Rebecca] is being awarded.

¶13 Finally, the court made several adjustments to Rebecca’s
claimed expenses related to savings. The court eliminated
Rebecca’s “[s]avings [p]lan contribution” of $2,500 per month.
The court explained,

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                         Knight v. Knight

      [Rebecca] admitted that this amount was only an
      estimate on her part in that she thought the parties
      may have saved $30,000 a year. [Jared’s] testimony
      was the parties did not contribute to any savings
      plan for the parties in any amount on a monthly or
      regular basis. Rather, the parties would save money
      as they had it in differing amounts and when there
      were sufficient funds to purchase what they
      wanted, the parties would spen[d] the money on
      cars and other purchases. No savings program was
      done during the marriage. In addition, [Jared] has
      not requested a savings plan as part of his expenses,
      and he is entitled to the same marital standard as
      [Rebecca].

The court eliminated “[r]etirement deposits” of $500 per month,
stating,

      The evidence adduced at trial established the parties
      never saved $500 a month for retirement. Further,
      [Jared] did not ask for retirement as part of his
      expenses relating to the marital standard of living[,]
      giving further credibility to this fact. The evidence
      was any retirement amounts for the parties was
      only set aside and deposited in three (3) of the
      twenty-seven (27) years of marriage.

The court eliminated Rebecca’s “additional capital/investment
funds” of $7,279 monthly because “[t]he testimony and evidence
established there never was any such capital or investment funds
like this during the marriage. Further, no testimony was provided
as to how this figure was arrived at to be claimed in the first
place.” The court declared that “[t]his is simply a request, which
is unfounded and which the [c]ourt finds is an attempt to inflate
[Rebecca’s] expenses.”

¶14   Rebecca now appeals.

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                         Knight v. Knight

            ISSUES AND STANDARDS OF REVIEW

¶15 Rebecca presents three issues on appeal. First, she
asserts that “the district court erred when it determined, on
summary judgment, that Rebecca had no interest in [the] Trust.”
“When an appellate court reviews a district court’s grant of
summary judgment, the facts and all reasonable inferences drawn
therefrom are viewed in the light most favorable to the
nonmoving party, while the district court’s legal conclusions and
ultimate grant or denial of summary judgment are reviewed for
correctness.” Massey v. Griffiths, 2007 UT 10, ¶ 8, 152 P.3d 312
(cleaned up).

¶16 Second, Rebecca argues that even “if the district
court’s interpretation and application of Arizona law to the
Trust and the Property Agreement were correct, it
nonetheless abused its discretion when it refused to divide
the Trust on equitable grounds.” “District courts have
considerable discretion concerning property distribution in a
divorce[,] and we will uphold the decision of the district court
unless a clear and prejudicial abuse of discretion is
demonstrated.” Gerwe v. Gerwe, 2018 UT App 75, ¶ 8, 424 P.3d
1113 (cleaned up).

¶17 Third, Rebecca contends that “the district court erred in its
calculation of alimony.” “A district court’s award of alimony is
reviewed for abuse of discretion.” Id. ¶ 9. “Although trial courts
have broad latitude in determining whether to award alimony
and in setting the amount, and we will not lightly disturb a trial
court’s alimony ruling, we will reverse if the court has not
exercised its discretion within the bounds and under the
standards we have set,” including if the court commits legal error.
Bjarnson v. Bjarnson, 2020 UT App 141, ¶ 5, 476 P.3d 145 (cleaned
up).

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                          Knight v. Knight

                            ANALYSIS

                 I. Rebecca’s Interest in the Trust

¶18 Rebecca argues that the district court erred in ruling that
she was not entitled to an equitable share of the Trust. Rebecca
first asserts that the court erred in applying the 2008 Arizona Trust
Code (the 2008 Code) because the 2009 Arizona Trust Code (the
2009 Code) applied retroactively and indicated that Jared’s power
of withdrawal gave him an ownership interest subject to
transmutation under the Property Agreement. She also argues,
alternatively, that even if the 2008 Code applies, Jared’s interest in
the Trust was marital property. Jared counters that the 2008 Code
applies, that his “interest in the Trust principal was bound by a
valid spendthrift provision” at the time of the Property
Agreement, and that it was therefore not transferrable through the
Property Agreement.

¶19 We agree with Jared and uphold the district court’s
decision on this issue. First, we conclude that the 2009 Code does
not retroactively modify the nature of Jared’s interest in the Trust
at the time of the Property Agreement. 4 Even if application of the
2009 Code would have the effect Rebecca claims, we cannot apply
that version of the code.

4. Jared asserts that Rebecca did not preserve this issue. We do not
address preservation because we resolve the issue in Jared’s favor.
See State v. Kitches, 2021 UT App 24, ¶ 28, 484 P.3d 415 (“If the
merits of a claim can easily be resolved in favor of the party
asserting that the claim was not preserved, we readily may opt to
do so without addressing preservation.” (cleaned up)), cert.
denied, 469 P.3d 718 (Utah 2021). But we note that our conclusion
aligns with the district court’s that “the legal position taken in
[t]he Restatement (Third) of Trusts § 56 was not the law in Arizona
until 2009, when it [was] partially codified as part of the [2009]
Code.”

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                          Knight v. Knight

¶20 Arizona law indicates that “beginning on January 1, 2009[,]
. . . [the 2009 Code] applies to all trusts created before, on or after
January 1, 2009.” Act of Dec. 31, 2008, ch. 247 § 18(A)(1), 2008 Ariz.
Sess. Laws 1179, 1179 (2nd Reg. Sess.). The parties entered the
Property Agreement in March 2008. Because this date predates
January 1, 2009, the 2009 Code had not taken effect at the time the
parties signed the Property Agreement and therefore had no
application to the Trust. Indeed, the Arizona Legislature did not
leave this point ambiguous but rather included a specific
provision stating that “[a]n act done before January 1, 2009[,] is
not affected by this act.” Id. Arizona caselaw has interpreted this
exception to mean that the preexisting law governed until January
1, 2009. See Favour v. Favour, No. 1 CA-CV 13-0196, 2014 WL
546361, ¶ 30 (Ariz. Ct. App. Feb. 11, 2014) (stating that a previous
statute “governs actions taken by a trustee prior to
implementation of the Arizona Trust Code . . . on January 1, 2009,”
and that the earlier statute “recognized the trustee’s investment
and management authority,” so “as a matter of law, [the trustee]
had the authority to invest, trade, diversify, and manage trust
assets prior to January 1, 2009” (cleaned up)); In re Esther Caplan
Trust, 265 P.3d 364, 366 (Ariz. Ct. App. 2011) (“The past principal
distributions are not governed by [the 2009 Code]. That statute
became effective after the challenged distributions were made.
The predecessor statute . . . merely required a trustee to keep the
beneficiaries of the trust reasonably informed of the trust and its
administration. The record establishes that [the appellee]
complied with these relatively minimal requirements.” (cleaned
up)).

¶21 Accordingly, at the time the parties signed the Property
Agreement, the 2008 Code was in effect. If the parties had signed
the Property Agreement on, say, January 2, 2009, the 2009 Code
could retroactively apply to the Trust—though it was created in
1994—to govern its terms. But because the Property Agreement
was signed before the 2009 Code went into effect, the 2009 Code’s
retroactivity provision also had no effect. Therefore, Jared’s

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                          Knight v. Knight

interest in the Trust for the sake of the Property Agreement was
whatever existed under the 2008 Code, and any restrictions of the
Trust as of March 2008 had full effect and were not modified by
the 2009 Code. Put another way, Jared could not give an interest
in property in 2008 that he did not have the right to transfer.

¶22 Under the 2008 Code, the Trust’s spendthrift provision
prevented Jared from transmuting his interest in the Trust into
marital property. 5 The 2008 Code specified that “if [a] trust
instrument provides that a beneficiary’s interest in principal is not
subject to voluntary or involuntary transfer, the beneficiary’s
interest in principal shall not be transferred.” Ariz. Rev. Stat. Ann.
§ 14-7702(a) (2008). The Trust was subject to a spendthrift

5. Rebecca styles this as a potential alternative ground to affirm,
but that is not accurate. While the court mostly discussed its
conclusion in terms of what “amount of the Trust principal [was]
due or payable within the meaning of that statute,” it clearly
determined that Arizona Revised Statutes section 14-7702 applied
and provided—with emphasis—the language specifying that a
trust not “subject to voluntary or involuntary transfer” is
nontransferable. See Ariz. Rev. Stat. Ann. § 14-7702(a) (2008). In
our view, the court ruled that the 2008 Code and the Trust’s
spendthrift provision prohibited Jared from transferring his
interest in the Trust through the Property Agreement and that
Jared’s ability at the time to withdraw up to one-third of the
principal did not render that portion (or any other) “due and
payable.” See id. § 14-7702(b). We agree with the court’s
application of this statute and similarly conclude that because
Jared’s withdrawal power relied on “the occurrence of a future
event,” even one “within the control of the beneficiary”—
specifically, him providing a written disbursement request—the
amount subject to the withdrawal power at the time of the
Property Agreement was “not immediately due and payable to
the beneficiary” and was therefore not available to satisfy a
money judgement. See id.

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                          Knight v. Knight

provision, declaring that Jared lacked the “right to assign,
transfer, encumber, or hypothecate his . . . interest in the principal
or income of the [T]rust in any manner.” Consequently, Jared’s
interest in the Trust was “not subject to voluntary or involuntary
transfer,” so his interest was not eligible for transfer. See id.; see
also In re Indenture of Trust Dated Jan. 13, 1964, 326 P.3d 307, 312
(Ariz. Ct. App. 2014) (“A valid spendthrift provision makes it
impossible for a beneficiary to make a legally binding transfer.”
(emphasis added) (cleaned up)).

¶23 In an effort to avoid the restrictive effect of the Trust’s
spendthrift provision, Rebecca argues that “[t]ransmuting
property is distinct from transferring property” and therefore
“Jared did not transfer any interest” when he allegedly
transmuted his interest in the Trust through the Property
Agreement. Citing State ex rel. Industrial Commission of Arizona v.
Wright, 43 P.3d 203 (Ariz. Ct. App. 2002), Jared responds that
Arizona caselaw rejects this argument:

       [In Wright], the court explained that the term
       “transfer” “includes any transaction in which a
       property interest was relinquished.” Because
       transmuting a property interest from separate
       property to community property surrenders the
       transferor’s entitlement to half of his or her separate
       property, the court reasoned, such a transmutation
       qualifies as a “transfer” of that property.

(Citations omitted.) Rebecca responds that the holding of Wright
applies “only in the specific context of the Uniform Fraudulent
Transfers Act.”

¶24 In Wright, the Arizona Court of Appeals considered a
premarital agreement that was fraudulently modified after a
husband fell subject to a workers’ compensation claim. Id. at 204.
The modification stated that separate earnings would be
community property, thus attempting to evade a judgment

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                          Knight v. Knight

against the husband’s earnings. Id. The court held that the
transmutation of the husband’s earnings constituted a transfer
under the Uniform Fraudulent Transfers Act:

       Before the modification, [the husband] held a sole
       interest in the entirety of his future earnings. The
       effect of the modification was to transfer that entire
       interest to the community. [The wife] would have a
       right to dispose of those earnings now dedicated to
       the community that she did not have when they
       were      [the   husband’s]     separate    property.
       Additionally, upon dissolution of marriage, [the
       husband] would have surrendered all entitlement to
       half of those earnings. Hence, [the husband] has
       transferred an asset within the meaning of [the
       Uniform Fraudulent Transfers Act].

Id. at 205. While the Wright court did conclude that the parties’
actions satisfied the broad statutory definition of a transfer under
the Uniform Fraudulent Transfers Act, see id., and while Rebecca
is correct that the Uniform Fraudulent Transfers Act is not at issue
here, the court’s analysis is still useful. If we accept Rebecca’s
argument that the Property Agreement transmuted Jared’s
interest in the Trust, then—like in Wright—before the Property
Agreement, Jared’s interest in the Trust was solely his and the
Property Agreement served to “transfer that entire interest to the
community.” See id. And upon divorce, Jared “would have
surrendered all entitlement to half of” his interest in the Trust. See
id. Accordingly, while we are not applying the definition of
“transfer” from the Uniform Fraudulent Transfers Act, we
conclude that a transmutation here would have been a transfer. In
terms of the bundle of sticks formulation that Rebecca referenced
in her motion for partial summary judgment, Jared would be
giving Rebecca access to and an interest in whatever sticks he was

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                          Knight v. Knight

holding at the time he signed the Property Agreement—sticks that
she did not previously hold. 6

¶25 Our conclusion that Jared’s purported transmutation of the
Trust into marital property would have constituted a transfer is
supported by the language of the Property Agreement itself. The
Property Agreement indicated that “to the extent necessary,
JARED and REBECCA each hereby gives, grants, conveys and
assigns to the other an interest in his or her property . . . so as to
transmute such property into the community property of JARED
and REBECCA.” (Emphasis added.) This language belies
Rebecca’s argument that the transmutation only changed the
nature of—but did not affect a transfer of—Jared’s interest. And
this language also runs up against the language in the Trust’s
spendthrift provision forbidding Jared from “assign[ing],
transfer[ing], encumber[ing], or hypothecat[ing] his . . . interest in
the principal or income of the [T]rust in any manner.”
Accordingly, we agree with the district court that the Property

6. We need not decide what exactly Jared’s interest was at the time
of the Property Agreement because, no matter which property
rights he then held, he would have given Rebecca an interest in
only those rights.
       As to the issue of any property rights he later acquired,
these are also unavailable to Rebecca based on the terms of the
Property Agreement. It states that “[a]ll property hereafter
acquired by JARED and REBECCA, or either of them, . . . shall be
deemed to be, and hereby declared to be, the community property
of JARED and REBECCA” but also declares that “any property
received by JARED and REBECCA by gift or inheritance after the
date of this [Property] Agreement shall be the sole and separate
property of the person receiving it, unless that person declares
otherwise in writing.” Any property interests related to the Trust
that Jared received after signing the Property Agreement were
“received by JARED . . . by gift or inheritance,” so they are his sole
and separate property.

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                          Knight v. Knight

Agreement had no effect on the Trust and that, therefore, Rebecca
does not have a legally cognizable interest in the Trust.

           II. Equitable Grounds for Dividing the Trust

¶26 Rebecca contends, alternatively, that “[r]egardless of
whether the Property Agreement granted Rebecca a legally
cognizable interest in the Trust itself, the district court was
required to consider the Trust as part of the marital property for
the sake of equity.” She asserts that “[d]istrict courts must
equitably divide the marital estate” and quotes Dahl v. Dahl, 2015
UT 79, 459 P.3d 276, for the propositions that “Utah law presumes
that property acquired during a marriage is marital property
subject to equitable distribution” and “[t]o the extent that the
Trust corpus contains marital property, Utah has a strong interest
in ensuring that such property is equitably divided in the parties’
divorce action.” Id. ¶ 26. Rebecca points us to Endrody v. Endrody,
914 P.2d 1166 (Utah Ct. App. 1996), in which a husband’s parents
had established a trust after the parties were married and had
named the wife as one of the beneficiaries. Id. at 1167–68. This
court affirmed a district court’s ruling that the trust assets were
not available for distribution as marital assets but that the
husband’s shares in the trust were marital property, an equitable
share of which should be placed in a constructive trust for the
wife’s benefit. Id. at 1170. Rebecca concludes, “In short, Jared’s
interest in the Trust was marital property. And even if the Trust
assets were not available for distribution, the court was required
to consider the Trust as part of the marital property for equitable
purposes.”

¶27 Rebecca’s argument misses the mark. We have concluded,
as did the district court, that Jared’s interest in the Trust was not
marital property or part of the marital estate subject to
distribution. This is a distinct conclusion from one stating that
trust funds are marital property but the trust principal is not
available for distribution. Therefore, caselaw addressing

 20210080-CA                     16               2023 UT App 86
                          Knight v. Knight

equitable distribution of trust funds that are marital property is
inapposite. And Rebecca provides no support for the position that
she should be awarded an equitable portion of the value of the
Trust’s principal despite a holding that she is not entitled to any
portion of Jared’s interest in the Trust. 7 Accordingly, we uphold
the district court’s decision that Rebecca is not entitled to any
portion of or equivalent sum for Jared’s interest in the Trust.

                            III. Alimony

¶28 Rebecca next contends that the court erred in its alimony
calculations when it made several deductions to Rebecca’s
claimed expenses. Rebecca insists that she “does not raise a factual
challenge” but instead “challenges the district court’s method of
reduction and justification for doing so.” She asserts that the
district court “misconstrued Utah law” when it adjusted her
expenses.

¶29 Under Utah law, courts must consider in alimony
determinations the factors listed in Utah Code section 30-3-5,
including “(i) the financial condition and needs of the recipient
spouse; (ii) the recipient’s earning capacity or ability to produce
income, including the impact of diminished workplace experience
resulting from primarily caring for a child of the payor spouse;
[and] (iii) the ability of the payor spouse to provide support.”
Utah Code § 30-3-5(10)(a); see also Jones v. Jones, 700 P.2d 1072, 1075

7. Rebecca also makes a similar argument under a contract law
theory: that the court should enforce the parties’ binding contract
to transmute the Trust through the Property Agreement. This
argument fails for a reason analogous to her equity argument—
she is wrong that Jared contracted to transmute his interest in the
Trust into marital property because the Trust’s spendthrift
provision prevented him from doing so. Therefore, there was no
binding contract for the court to enforce, and her argument on this
point is similarly unavailing.

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                           Knight v. Knight

(Utah 1985); English v. English, 565 P.2d 409, 411–12 (Utah 1977).
“An alimony award should also advance, as much as possible, the
primary purposes of alimony.” Rule v. Rule, 2017 UT App 137,
¶ 14, 402 P.3d 153 (cleaned up). Alimony is intended “(1) to get
the parties as close as possible to the same standard of living that
existed during the marriage; (2) to equalize the standards of living
of each party; and (3) to prevent the recipient spouse from
becoming a public charge.” Jensen v. Jensen, 2008 UT App 392, ¶ 9,
197 P.3d 117 (cleaned up).

¶30    We have previously explained,

       Alimony is not limited to providing for only basic
       needs but should be fashioned in consideration of
       the recipient spouse’s station in life in light of the
       parties’ customary or proper status or
       circumstances, with the goal being an alimony
       award calculated to approximate the parties’
       standard of living during the marriage as closely as
       possible.

Rule, 2017 UT App 137, ¶ 14 (cleaned up); see also Davis v. Davis,
749 P.2d 647, 649 (Utah 1988) (“The ultimate test of the propriety
of an alimony award is whether, given all of these factors, the
party receiving alimony will be able to support him- or herself as
nearly as possible at the standard of living enjoyed during
marriage.” (cleaned up)); Savage v. Savage, 658 P.2d 1201, 1205
(Utah 1983) (“One of the chief functions of an alimony award is to
permit the parties to maintain as much as possible the same
standards after the dissolution of the marriage as those enjoyed
during the marriage.”). And “in terms of alimony, the marital
standard of living analysis is about whether the parties’ proposed
points of calculation are consistent with the parties’ manner of
living and financial decisions (i.e., the historical allocation of their
resources).” Mintz v. Mintz, 2023 UT App 17, ¶ 24, 525 P.3d 534,
cert. denied, 523 P.3d 730 (Utah 2023).

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                         Knight v. Knight

A.    Home Maintenance

¶31 Rebecca alleges that the district court improperly reduced
her claimed expenses related to home maintenance, including
expenses for snow removal, pool and spa maintenance, and
landscaping. She argues that Jared took care of these tasks during
the marriage and she should now be compensated for the cost of
hiring other individuals to accomplish these tasks. In her words,
“Rebecca’s marital standard of living was that someone else did
the pool maintenance, snow removal, and landscaping. Since that
person has moved out, she is left without the standard of living to
which she was accustomed.”

¶32 Rebecca’s argument on this point is fatally flawed. A
court’s inquiry in evaluating historical expenses to determine
alimony involves the marital standard of living—not a separate
standard of living for each person within the marriage. See Davis,
749 P.2d at 649 (describing “the standard of living enjoyed during
marriage” (cleaned up)); Rule, 2017 UT App 137, ¶ 14 (considering
“the parties’ standard of living during the marriage” (cleaned
up)); Jensen, 2008 UT App 392, ¶ 9 (discussing the “standard of
living that existed during the marriage” as one but the “the
standards of living of each party” after divorce as two (cleaned
up)). The marital standard of living is that which the parties
shared, and courts consider the parties as a single unit when
evaluating that standard. We can only imagine the chaos that
would ensue if divorcing partners could expense every task their
former spouses previously performed. 8 Instead, we reemphasize

8. The absurdity of this position is evident by a scenario in which
a spouse who has dedicated years to primarily raising children
and earns less than the other spouse is penalized upon divorce by
the higher-earning spouse expensing many tasks related to
childcare and home maintenance that the lesser-earning spouse
previously shouldered without pay. In such scenarios, higher-
                                                      (continued…)

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                          Knight v. Knight

that “in terms of alimony, the marital standard of living analysis
is about whether the parties’ proposed points of calculation are
consistent with the parties’ manner of living and financial
decisions (i.e., the historical allocation of their resources).” Mintz,
2023 UT App 17, ¶ 24. Rebecca admits that the couple did not
historically allocate funds to these expenses while the parties were
married, so they cannot be considered part of the marital standard
of living. And the court found as much, stating, “[t]he parties
never paid for snow removal during the marriage[,] and this
expense was not part of the marital [lifestyle]”; “[t]he parties did
not have pool maintenance expense[s] during the marriage as the
pool was maintained by the parties”; and landscaping “was not
an expense that was incurred during the marriage as the yard
work was done by the parties themselves.” Therefore, the court
was correct in reducing Rebecca’s claims for these categories
when calculating her expenses for the sake of alimony. 9

earning spouses could effectively lower their alimony burdens to
the detriment of lesser-earning spouses without any
remuneration for the work that previously went unpaid.

9. Even so, the court did erroneously discuss factors it should not
have considered in its findings on these issues. For the pool
maintenance expenses, the court stated that Rebecca was “not
cleaning the pool despite acknowledging she is capable of doing
so,” and for landscaping expenses the court declared that Rebecca
“further acknowledged that she is capable of yard work.”
Whether Rebecca was capable of taking on these tasks is irrelevant
to the question of whether their expenses were part of the marital
standard of living.
       Even more problematic, the court stated, “Also, [Jared] has
not requested that he [have] third parties do his yard
maintenance.” This thinking—that one party’s claimed expenses
should determine the permissible scope of the other party’s—is
                                                    (continued…)

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                          Knight v. Knight

¶33 However, Rebecca did provide evidence that the parties
had historically paid some amount for bark replacement and lawn
aeration. In a financial declaration, she listed a monthly expense
of $126.66 for “[b]ark for the year,” and she indicated that “[t]his
[was] based on an actual historical expense of $3,040.00 every 2
years.” She also listed a monthly expense of $5 for aerating and
stated that “[t]his [was] based on an actual historical expense of
$30 paid twice per year.” Additionally, she testified that the
parties had historically replaced bark and that doing so was
“quite costly.” 10 Jared, in a memorandum submitted to the court,
admitted that bark was an expense that the parties had previously
paid and did not contest the aerating expense. Therefore, the costs
associated with bark replacement and lawn aeration were part of
the marital standard of living such that they were not properly

improper and, frankly, dangerous. We discuss our concerns with
such an approach below. See infra ¶ 43. But ultimately the court’s
actions of reducing Rebecca’s expenses for each of these categories
was not an abuse of discretion because the court also—correctly—
found that each claimed expense was not part of the parties’
marital standard of living.

10. It appears that the court lumped these expenses in with
landscaping. Rebecca completed a financial declaration on
January 31, 2019, that included itemized expenses for bark, lawn
aeration, and landscaping. These three expenses combined added
up to $414.66. A financial declaration that Rebecca submitted on
October 22, 2020, listed an expense for “[l]andscaping, aerating,
[and] bark” of $414.66 per month. The court addressed only
landscaping in its findings, not mentioning aeration or bark. The
court’s failure to consider these distinct, historical expenses
constitutes an abuse of discretion. See Bjarnson v. Bjarnson, 2020
UT App 141, ¶ 5, 476 P.3d 145. As to the remaining $283 per month
that is rightly attributed to landscaping alone, this is not a marital
expense.

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                          Knight v. Knight

excluded from consideration in the court’s alimony calculations.
Accordingly, because the facts are otherwise undisputed on this
issue, we reverse on this point and instruct the court to enter
expenses for Rebecca of $5 per month for lawn aeration and
$126.66 per month for bark replacement.

B.     Health and Personal Care

1.     Health Insurance

¶34 Rebecca asserts that the district court abused its discretion
in reducing her claimed expense for health insurance. At trial, she
informed the court that she was still on Jared’s family’s health
insurance plan but explained her claimed cost of $757 monthly:
“This was a quote that I sought out. . . . It does not have any
deductible. . . . [H]istorically our deductible [was] put on an HSA
card that was covered by the Knight Group.” Both parties agreed
that the historical deductible, which had been paid by the Knight
Group, was around $8,000.

¶35 The court reduced Rebecca’s health insurance expense to
$411 per month, the number Jared gave as the historical amount
the parties paid for health care services through an HSA card. The
court explained, “[N]o written evidence was provided as to the
costs for health care coverage for [Rebecca]. [Rebecca]
acknowledged the $757 was for a policy with no deductibles[,]
which is not the same level of policy the parties currently have in
place, which has [an] $8,000 a year deductible.” The court
indicated that its adjustment was “consistent with current known
expense[s] of health care of the parties and which [Jared]
established at $411 a month.”

¶36 This conclusion was in keeping with the court’s
determination that monetary support from the Knight family
qualified as gifts and could not be considered in determining the
marital standard of living or the parties’ expenses. It noted, “[I]n
this case . . . a large portion of these things the parties were

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                           Knight v. Knight

enjoying was the result of the generosity and the benefits of
others. When there’s . . . no guarantee or no requirement to have
those additional funds come in . . . to have this lifestyle, you know,
they’re not going to be able to have it.” The court again said, “You
can’t count gifts . . . that were given at the discretion of other
individuals to say you’re entitled to continue to receive those gifts
and have those funds coming in to you to maintain a standard of
living that you may have [had] when you received those
gifts . . . .”

¶37 The court’s stance on this issue is correct: the gifts from
Jared’s family, despite being a regular feature of the marriage,
may not be properly considered in calculating Rebecca’s needs or
Jared’s ability to pay alimony. See Utah Code § 30-3-5(10)(a). The
alimony factors refer only to the finances of the spouses, not those
of outside parties. Id.; see also Jones v. Jones, 700 P.2d 1072, 1075
(Utah 1985). Additionally, we have enunciated previously that
past gifts are not to be considered in the alimony calculus: “[T]he
court could not base its prospective order on past gifts that have
no assurance of being continued because [a donor] has no legal
obligation to continue providing the monetary support that she
has in the past.” Issertell v. Issertell, 2020 UT App 62, ¶ 26, 463 P.3d
698.

¶38 Accordingly, the court did not abuse its discretion when it
determined that Rebecca did not provide qualifying evidence of
her future health insurance expenses because she submitted only
a quote for a plan without a deductible. The parties both testified
that they had a deductible during the marriage, and Rebecca is
not entitled to a health insurance plan better than the one the
parties had during the marriage. The fact that the parties’
deductible was historically paid by the Knight Group does not
impact our analysis because those payments were “past gifts that
have no assurance of being continued because [the Knight Group]
has no legal obligation to continue providing the monetary
support that [it] has in the past.” See id. And without evidence

 20210080-CA                      23                 2023 UT App 86
                         Knight v. Knight

from Rebecca on which it could rely, the court did not abuse its
discretion in accepting the amount Jared put forth as the parties’
historical health insurance cost. 11 See Sauer v. Sauer, 2017 UT App
114, ¶ 10, 400 P.3d 1204 (“Once the court determined that there
was no evidence that was both credible and relevant regarding
[the recipient spouse’s] reasonable housing needs, it was
appropriate for the court to impute a reasonable amount based on
other evidence provided by the parties. . . . We therefore see no
impropriety in the trial court’s decision to impute housing needs
to [the recipient spouse] in the same amount as [the payor spouse]
had claimed was reasonable . . . .”). We affirm on this point.

2.     Personal Grooming

¶39 Rebecca also asserts that the court abused its discretion in
reducing Rebecca’s claimed expense for “personal grooming.”
The court stated that it was “reduc[ing] personal grooming by
$449.83, from $949.83 to $500 a month,” because Rebecca’s

11. However, we note that it was improper for the court to
consider evidence from sources outside the record on this topic.
The court indicated that it “ha[d] received evidence in other cases
that health care coverage for a single person can be obtained in
the $400 to $500 a month range.” Evidence beyond this case is
irrelevant to determining the parties’ historical expenses or their
marital standard of living. See Mintz v. Mintz, 2023 UT App 17,
¶ 24, 525 P.3d 534 (“The marital standard of living analysis is
about whether the parties’ proposed points of calculation are
consistent with the parties’ manner of living and financial
decisions (i.e., the historical allocation of their resources).”
(cleaned up) (emphasis added)). And, as we discuss below, the
amount that is reasonable for different parties’ expenses varies
according to the circumstances unique to each divorcing couple’s
lifestyle. But because the court ultimately based its finding for
health insurance on the figure Jared submitted, this errant
comment does not constitute an abuse of discretion.

 20210080-CA                    24                2023 UT App 86
                         Knight v. Knight

“evidence of getting a haircut twice a year and having her nails
and eye lashes done monthly to every six (6) weeks did not
establish this claimed and requested expense of $11,397.96 a year
for personal expenses.” The court also stated that Jared “did not
ask for any personal grooming as part of his expenses relating to
the marital standard of living[,] and he was not getting the $500
[Rebecca was] being awarded.”

¶40 Rebecca takes issue with the court’s findings and
reasoning, asserting,

      [T]his was not the evidence. She testified that she
      gets her eyelashes and nails done every two weeks,
      not “monthly to every six (6) weeks.” She testified
      that in addition to getting her hair cut, she also gets
      a perm. She testified that she gets a full body wax.
      She also testified that she has costs for “toenails.”
      She also testified that she has “maintenance” costs.
      She stated that to reach this number she “went
      through [her] credit card statements and added up
      for a year’s worth of” these expenses. She testified
      that “obviously this is historically . . . what I spent.”

             Opposing counsel did not dispute Rebecca’s
      expenses, but simply opined that he thought “the
      maximum would be . . . $500 a month. $6000 a year
      for personal grooming is quite a nice budget.” But
      what opposing counsel thinks qualifies as “quite a
      nice budget” is not the test in Utah. Instead, the test
      is the marital standard of living, and Rebecca’s
      testimony—unchallenged by contrary evidence—
      was that she spent $949.83 per month.

            Second, the district court reduced Rebecca’s
      personal grooming expenses because Jared “did not
      ask for any personal grooming as part of his
      expenses relating to the marital standard of living

 20210080-CA                     25                2023 UT App 86
                          Knight v. Knight

       and he was not getting the $500 [Rebecca] is being
       awarded.” That is irrelevant. If Jared spends
       nothing on personal grooming, or if he has no
       monthly expenses because the Knight family pays
       for them all, that does not mean that Rebecca’s
       estimated expenses are inaccurate.

¶41 We agree with Rebecca on all fronts. The court would have
acted within its discretion if it had found Rebecca’s evidence
unreliable or had determined that Rebecca’s claimed expenses
were unreasonable in light of the couple’s marital standard of
living. See Woolums v. Woolums, 2013 UT App 232, ¶ 10, 312 P.3d
939 (“The district court’s evaluation of and reliance on [one
spouse’s] testimony, along with its own determinations of the
reasonableness of the claimed expenses, fell squarely within its
broad discretion to determine an appropriate alimony award.”).
But that is not what it did. It disregarded Rebecca’s evidence of
historical spending and substituted a figure provided by Jared’s
counsel with no evidentiary basis. Jared’s counsel’s thoughts on
what makes “quite a nice budget” are irrelevant. The court’s
inquiry should have been rooted in Rebecca and Jared’s marital
standard of living, as indicated by their historical spending. See
Mintz v. Mintz, 2023 UT App 17, ¶ 24, 525 P.3d 534, cert. denied,
523 P.3d 730 (Utah 2023).

¶42 A court’s inquiry into the marital standard of living must
evaluate the specific circumstances of that couple, and expenses
that are unreasonable in light of one couple’s marital standard of
living may be reasonable in light of another couple’s marital
standard of living. “Indeed, we have explained that alimony is not
limited to providing for only basic needs but should be fashioned
in consideration of the recipient spouse’s station in life in light of
the parties’ customary or proper status or circumstances.” Rule v.
Rule, 2017 UT App 137, ¶ 14, 402 P.3d 153 (cleaned up). And “the
goal” of the inquiry is “an alimony award calculated to
approximate the parties’ standard of living during the marriage

 20210080-CA                     26                2023 UT App 86
                           Knight v. Knight

as closely as possible.” Id.; see also Davis v. Davis, 749 P.2d 647, 649
(Utah 1988) (“The ultimate test of the propriety of an alimony
award is whether, given all of these factors, the party receiving
alimony will be able to support him- or herself as nearly as
possible at the standard of living enjoyed during marriage.”
(cleaned up)); Savage v. Savage, 658 P.2d 1201, 1205 (Utah 1983)
(“One of the chief functions of an alimony award is to permit the
parties to maintain as much as possible the same standards after
the dissolution of the marriage as those enjoyed during the
marriage.”). Rebecca testified that the marital standard of living
included significant spending on her personal grooming. The
court acted improperly when it discarded this evidence and
substituted another amount without properly concluding that
Rebecca’s evidence was inadequate or her expenses were
unreasonable in light of the marital standard of living.

¶43 It was also improper for the court to base its determination,
in part, on Jared’s lack of submission for this budget line item.
There is no need for courts to limit one party’s expenses to those
the other party also claims. See Utah Code § 30-3-5(10)(a)
(including as a factor in determining alimony “the financial
condition and needs of the recipient spouse”). In fact, doing so
increases the risk of gamesmanship between the parties. There is
already a risk that divorcing spouses may inflate their claimed
expenses in an effort to sway the alimony calculation in their
favor: payor spouses might attempt to minimize their ability to
provide support by claiming high expenses, while recipient
spouses might inflate their expenses to claim that their needs are
great. See id. But limiting a recipient spouse’s potential expenses
to only those categories claimed by the payor spouse dangerously
alters this already-thorny calculation. In situations where a payor
spouse’s ability to pay is unlikely to be an issue, the payor spouse
would face a significant incentive to omit many expenses and
thereby drastically reduce the receiving spouse’s needs. But the
danger is not just in these situations. In any case, a payor spouse
would be incentivized to identify categories for which the

 20210080-CA                      27                 2023 UT App 86
                         Knight v. Knight

recipient spouse would likely have higher expenses and omit
those. In other words, payor spouses could significantly undercut
alimony awards by strategically omitting expenses. Accordingly,
we caution courts not to apply such faulty reasoning when
calculating alimony. Instead, courts should base their findings on
expenses that are reasonable in light of the couple’s unique
marital standard of living. See Mintz, 2023 UT App 17, ¶ 24.

¶44 On this front, we clarify that a couple’s marital standard of
living may include disparate spending by the parties on various
categories during the marriage. Throughout the marriage, one
spouse may spend more—even significantly more—than the
other on personal grooming, entertainment, travel, or any number
of other expense categories. A partner may embrace the age-old
adage’s modernized mantra of “happy spouse, happy house,”
may derive independent pleasure from a spouse’s purchases, or
may observe a spouse’s spending habits—whether for monthly
follicle support treatments or Jazz tickets only one spouse actually
uses—through gritted teeth. But for the sake of calculating
alimony, we assume that the parties agreed on their household
expenditures such that whatever was historically spent by the
parties during the marriage constitutes the couple’s marital
standard of living, even if the spending was lopsided—or, indeed,
one-sided—within a given expense category. See Davis, 749 P.2d
at 649; Rule, 2017 UT App 137, ¶ 14. Consequently, whether Jared
truly spent nothing on personal grooming historically or he
simply elected to omit his expenses in that category, the court
erred in limiting its acceptance of Rebecca’s personal grooming
expenses based on Jared’s lack of submission.

¶45 The court abused its discretion when it applied the wrong
legal standard to Rebecca’s claimed expenses for personal
grooming. Because the court did not find Rebecca’s evidence
unreliable or determine that Rebecca’s claimed expenses were
unreasonable in light of the couple’s marital standard of living,
we reverse its decision on this point and instruct it to modify its

 20210080-CA                    28                2023 UT App 86
                         Knight v. Knight

findings to include the $949.83 per month consistent with the
parties’ marital standard of living.

C.     Savings and Other Funds

1.     Savings Plan

¶46 Rebecca asserts that the court wrongfully entirely rejected
her expense for a “[s]avings [p]lan” of $2,500 per month. First, she
points to the court’s statement that “[Jared] has not requested a
savings plan as part of his expenses, and he is entitled to the same
marital standard as [Rebecca].” As we have discussed, such a
consideration has no place in the alimony analysis under Utah
law. Additionally, the court summarized the evidence related to
a savings plan:

       [Rebecca] admitted that this amount was only an
       estimate on her part in that she thought the parties
       may have saved $30,000 a year. [Jared’s] testimony
       was the parties did not contribute to any savings
       plan for the parties in any amount on a monthly or
       regular basis. Rather, the parties would save money
       as they had it in differing amounts and when there
       were sufficient funds to purchase what they
       wanted, the parties would spen[d] the money on
       cars and other purchases.

From this, the court concluded that “[n]o savings program was
done during the marriage.” But in so concluding, the court
misapplied Utah law on this subject.

¶47 In Mintz v. Mintz, 2023 UT App 17, 525 P.3d 534, cert. denied,
523 P.3d 730 (Utah 2023), we considered a similar question of
whether “the district court erred in excluding from the alimony
award an amount reflective of historical investment” where a
couple had a habit of investing money “essentially as savings.” Id.
¶¶ 2, 16. There, the parties’ testimonies established that “[b]efore

 20210080-CA                    29                2023 UT App 86
                         Knight v. Knight

2014, they made deposits into investment accounts ‘when money
was left over after normal marital spending,’ and after 2014, they
made direct deposits into investment accounts as part of [the
husband’s] employment.” Id. ¶ 2. We reiterated that, in situations
like these, “[t]he critical question is whether funds for post-
divorce savings, investment, and retirement accounts are
necessary because contributing to such accounts was standard
practice during the marriage and helped to form the couple’s
marital standard of living.” Id. ¶ 17 (quoting Bakanowski v.
Bakanowski, 2003 UT App 357, ¶ 16, 80 P.3d 153). We noted that
“when the Bakanowski court provided the test for appropriate
consideration of savings, investment, and retirement accounts in
alimony calculations, it cited” another case “in which the court
reasoned that because the parties had made regular savings
deposits, including savings in the alimony award could help
maintain the recipient spouse’s marital standard of living.” Id.
¶ 18 (cleaned up). Then we clarified that “an event must certainly
be recurring but need not be uniformly systematic to be
considered ‘regular.’ Indeed, something can be done ‘regularly’ if
done whenever the opportunity arises, though the actual time
sequence may be sporadic.” Id. ¶ 19 (cleaned up). So, we
explained,

      Even if savings deposits and investments do not
      occur on an exact timetable, such marital
      expenditures can be considered a standard practice
      in those infrequent and unusual circumstances
      where a party can produce sufficiently persuasive
      evidence that savings deposits and investments
      were a recurring marital action whenever the
      opportunity arose, though the actual time sequence
      may be sporadic.

Id. ¶ 20 (cleaned up). And we concluded that the parties’
testimonies that they made substantial deposits into investment
accounts “at least annually” “established that the parties followed

 20210080-CA                    30               2023 UT App 86
                          Knight v. Knight

a regular pattern, i.e., a standard practice, of investing a portion
of their annual income.” Id. ¶ 21 (cleaned up).

¶48 We then considered the question of whether the parties’
standard practice of investing contributed to their marital
standard of living, because “to justify an alimony award that
includes an amount for investment, the parties’ acts of investing
must also contribute to the ‘marital standard of living.’” Id. ¶ 22
(quoting Bakanowski, 2003 UT App 357, ¶ 16). We concluded that
the parties’ standard practice of investing did contribute to their
marital standard of living, so we remanded “the case to the
district court to recalculate alimony based on the amount that the
couple’s historical investment contributed to the marital standard
of living.” Id. ¶ 28. The same is true for savings: a court must
determine whether a couple’s standard practice of saving
contributed to their marital standard of living to incorporate
savings into an alimony award. See id.

¶49 Here, such a conclusion is less apparent from the district
court’s findings than was true in Mintz. The court’s description of
Rebecca’s testimony of annual savings and of Jared’s testimony
that the parties would save to fund large purchases certainly
suggests that savings may have been a standard practice during
the marriage that contributed to the marital standard of living. See
id. ¶¶ 20–22; Bakanowski, 2003 UT App 357, ¶ 16; Kemp v. Kemp,
2001 UT App 157U, paras. 3–4. But the court’s findings regarding
the regularity of the couple’s savings habits are insufficient for us
to hold that this standard is clearly met. Still, the court’s
conclusion that “[n]o savings program was done during the
marriage” does not clearly follow from its other findings, given
our caselaw on this topic. The court’s focus strictly on monthly
savings habits is myopic and at odds with precedent, and the
court provides no explanation for its interpretation of Jared’s
testimony that the parties did not save on a “regular basis.”
Therefore, we conclude that the court exceeded its discretion on
this matter insofar as it applied the incorrect legal standard. See

 20210080-CA                     31               2023 UT App 86
                          Knight v. Knight

Bjarnson v. Bjarnson, 2020 UT App 141, ¶ 5, 476 P.3d 145 (“We will
reverse [an alimony award] if the court has not exercised its
discretion within the bounds and under the standards we have set
. . . .” (cleaned up)). We remand this matter for the court to make
additional findings as to the regularity of the parties’ savings
deposits. On remand, “the court should, as a legal matter, ensure
it employs the correct legal definitions of standard practice and
marital standard of living, apply the facts of [this] case to those
definitions, and then determine whether the facts as found meet
the criteria for a savings-based alimony award.” Mintz, 2023 UT
App 17, ¶ 17.

2.     Retirement

¶50 Rebecca also asserts that the court erred in entirely
rejecting her submitted expense for “[r]etirement deposits” of
$500 per month. The court explained that “[t]he evidence adduced
at trial established the parties never saved $500 a month for
retirement. . . . The evidence was any retirement amounts for the
parties was only set aside and deposited in three (3) of the twenty-
seven (27) years of marriage.” The court again improperly
discussed the point that “[Jared] did not ask for retirement as part
of his expenses relating to the marital standard of living,” but
rather than relying on this point to deny Rebecca’s claim for a
retirement savings provision in the alimony award, the court
stated that this point gave “further credibility to th[e] fact” that
the parties did not regularly save for retirement. More
importantly, and unlike for the savings category, the court’s
conclusion that there was no standard practice of saving for
retirement flows from its findings on the irregularity of the parties
saving for retirement while married.

¶51 Furthermore, Rebecca does not argue on appeal that the
court applied the wrong legal standard here. She explains that
Jared did not submit a retirement expense because he “is worth
literally millions of dollars and Rebecca, when she was married,

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                           Knight v. Knight

also anticipated having millions of dollars available for
retirement.” She argues that “[t]o even come close to
approximating the marital standard of living, Rebecca must start
to save for retirement.” But this is not in line with our caselaw.
Again, we look to the parties’ “historical allocation of their
resources” to determine their marital standard of living, id. ¶ 24,
and Rebecca does not argue that the parties historically allocated
their resources by saving regularly for retirement. Therefore, the
court did not abuse its discretion in determining that saving for
retirement was not a feature of the marital standard of living and,
accordingly, removing that claimed expense when calculating
alimony. We affirm on this point.

3.     Additional Capital/Investment Funds

¶52 Finally, Rebecca contends that the court was wrong to
reject her expense for “additional capital/investment funds” of
$7,279 monthly. The court did so because “[t]he testimony and
evidence established there never was any such capital or
investment funds like this during the marriage. Further, no
testimony was provided as to how this figure was arrived at to be
claimed in the first place.” The court declared that “[t]his is simply
a request, which is unfounded and which the [c]ourt finds is an
attempt to inflate [Rebecca’s] expenses.” Rebecca argues on
appeal that this “is incorrect” and that her “[f]inancial
[d]eclaration provide[d] a detailed explanation of how the figure
was computed: ‘This is an amount based on funds the parties
historically had available from [Jared’s] family wealth for
discretionary investments . . . .’” This argument does not prevail.
As we have explained, past gifts are excluded from the alimony
calculus. See Issertell v. Issertell, 2020 UT App 62, ¶ 26, 463 P.3d 698.
The funds that were historically available for investment were
gifts, and as such, they are not properly considered as a standard
practice contributing to the marital standard of living. See id.;
Mintz, 2023 UT App 17, ¶¶ 20–22. Therefore, the court was acting

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                         Knight v. Knight

within its discretion as to this item, and we affirm its decision in
this respect.

                         CONCLUSION

¶53 The district court did not err in determining that Rebecca
had no interest in the Trust, and it did not abuse its discretion in
deciding against dividing the Trust on equitable grounds. We
affirm in this respect.

¶54 As to alimony, the court exceeded its discretion when it
applied the wrong legal standard when calculating several of
Rebecca’s expenses. Accordingly, we reverse the court’s decision
with respect to Rebecca’s personal grooming expenses and the
expenses associated with lawn aeration and bark replacement. We
also remand the matter for further factual findings as to the
regularity of the parties’ savings deposits and a determination of
whether, applying the law correctly, the parties’ savings habits
constituted a standard practice contributing to the marital
standard of living. We affirm the remainder of the court’s alimony
determinations.

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