Court Opinion

ID: 9798071
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-31 04:36:31.763459+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:00:38.417813
License: Public Domain

ORME, Judge
(concurring specially):
I 21 I agree with the analysis in Parts I(B) and II of the lead opinion. I concur in the decision to remand the case so that the trial court can adjust its decree, if necessary, in light of our reversal of the award to Wife of the increased value of the equity in A & D. I also agree that, once this has been accomplished, the trial court should reconsider the award of attorney fees in the context of making adequate factual findings on the required criteria. The primary foeus will, nee-essarily, be on Wife's need for assistance in paying her attorney fees given the property division and support provisions of the revised decree.
22 I do not join in Part I(A) of the lead opinion-not so much because I disagree with the analysis but because it is completely unnecessary to reach the issue treated in Part I(A) in view of our resolution in Part I(B). In Part I(B) we hold Wife has no claim on the increased value of the equity in A & D because her contributions to the marriage in child-rearing and homemaking are not the kind of business- or investment-related contributions envisioned in the line of cases beginning with Mortensen v. Mortensen, 760 P.2d 304 (Utah 1988), as warranting an award of one spouse's separate property to the other spouse. Thus, it simply does not matter, in the posture of this case, whether Husband owns all or only some of the stock in A & D or whether the increased value identified by the trial court is attributable to all issued shares or only the shares held beneficially by Husband. I could see the need to opine on these matters if we held in Part I(B) that Wife had some claim on the equity in A & D and the question then arose as to what portion of A & D's equity actually belonged to Husband and was thus awarda-ble, in whole or in part, to Wife. But Husband's ownership percentage just does not matter in this divorce proceeding once we hold Wife has no claim on any of the equity in A & D.
123 The ownership interests of Husband, his brother, and his mother may need to be sorted out among themselves, but no findings the trial court made in this regard are binding in any way on the brother, the mother, or the corporation, given that they were not parties. Accordingly, there is no reason for us to deal with the stock ownership issue beyond making this simple observation.