Court Opinion

ID: 9739818
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 20:21:33.399929+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:24:14.129636
License: Public Domain

VANDE WALLE, Justice,
concurring specially.
I reluctantly concur in the result reached in the majority opinion. Were it not for the specific statutory admonition in Section 14-05-24, N.D.C.C., that the court distribute the real and personal property of the parties as may seem just and proper, I might well dissent. If the parties have presented no evidence of the value of the military pension to the trial court, the trial judge is not in a position to place a value on the pension. The case law of the various jurisdictions is littered with decisions discussing the various methods by which pensions or *492retirement benefits may be valued for purposes of distribution in divorce proceedings. As Justice Pederson has noted in the majority opinion, we have a few of our own in North Dakota. I believe it is safe to assume that in most of those cases evidence concerning the value of the pension or retirement benefit was at least offered to the court. Here, no evidence concerning the value of the pension was submitted to the court. If the trial judge had attempted to assign a value to the pension and divide it between the parties I have no doubt we would have reversed because there was no evidence in the record upon which the trial judge could have made such a determination.
In a negligence action tried to the court we have no trouble affirming a dismissal where the plaintiff fails to introduce evidence to prove his claim. Here, despite the fact there is no evidence in the record concerning the value of the pension and despite the fact Conchita did not raise as an issue on appeal the failure of the trial judge to value and divide the pension, I reluctantly concur in the result reached by the majority opinion. I do so partly because of the trial judge’s erroneous indication that an unvested military pension could not be considered in property distribution and partly because Section 14-05-24, N.D.C.C., appears to place an affirmative duty on the trial courts to distribute the property of the parties equitably.
GIERKE, J., concurs.