Court Opinion

ID: 9543580
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 16:46:46.887352+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:10:38.293489
License: Public Domain

DeBRULER, Justice,
dissenting.
Pursuant to Ind.Code § 31-1-11.5-11, in the form applicable to this appeal, the trial court was under a duty to “divide the property of the parties, whether owned by either spouse prior to the marriage, acquired by either spouse in his or her own right after the marriage and prior to the final separation, or acquired by their joint efforts.” The trial court, as I view its judgment, deemed the increase in the value of the marital residence which occurred after the parties finally and physically separated, to be excludable from the property of the parties subject to court division. The trial court cannot therefore be accurately said to have awarded that increase of value to the wife at all. The court below was surely in error in treating this increase of value in the manner that it did. All of the right, title, and interest of the parties in and to the marital residence was acquired by them in 1972 at the time of purchase. Cf. In Re The Marriage of Osborne, (1977) Ind.App., 369 N.E.2d 653.
The increase in value of the residence which occurred between the final separation of the parties and their dissolution hearing was “property” subject to its dispo-sitional authority. The division of property is based upon a mistaken interpretation and application of the statutory standard for determining what is property of the parties, and as such should not be permitted to stand.