Court Opinion

ID: 9681848
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 07:59:42.173414+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:17:36.196854
License: Public Domain

John I. Purtle, Justice, dissenting. I cannot “trip it . . . [o] n the light fantastic toe” so spryly as the majority. Neither can I turn to Day v. Day as a cure-all for every marital property question. As for me, I must turn to the law as written. Ark. Code Ann. § 9-12-315(b) (1987) states: (b) For the purpose of this section “marital property” means all property acquired by either spouse subsequent to the marriage except: (1) Property acquired by gift, bequest, devise, or descent; (2) Property acquired in exchange for property acquired prior to the marriage or in exchange for property acquired by gift, bequest, devise, or descent; (3) Property acquired by a spouse after a decree of divorce from bed and board; (4) Property excluded by valid agreement of the parties; and (5) The increase in value of property acquired prior to the marriage. In the present case the funds in the joint bank account were obviously acquired subsequent to the marriage. Moreover, the bank account does not fit into any of the five categories excepted from the basic rule. It seems to me that the exact issue before us at this time was considered by the Court of Appeals in Lofton v. Lofton, 23 Ark. App. 203, 745 S.W.2d 635 (1988), where it was stated: [0]nce property, whether personal or real, is placed in the names of persons who are husband and wife, without specifying the manner in which they take, there is a presumption that they own the property as tenants by the entirety and it takes clear and convincing evidence to overcome that presumption. Apparently we are going to have two types of property involving joint bank accounts held by a husband and wife. One rule will apply to the Loftons and another to the Jacksons. We will thereafter have problems deciding whether it is a Lofton case or a Jackson case. Lofton had acquired property by inheritance from his parents. He bought his brother’s half interest in the property. The purchased property was held to be marital property. In the present case the appellee inherited property from her parents. Subsequently she placed some of these funds in a joint account with her husband. These funds were in turn used to purchase the sister’s half interest in the inherited residence. I can find no distinction in the facts of the two cases. The appellee does not offer to refund to the appellant the amount of money which he had deposited in their account. The $31,000 he received was from the sale of property he owned prior to the marriage. If the chancellor felt a duty to trace the appellee’s money from her separate funds through the joint checking account, he should have also felt the duty to trace the appellant’s separate funds through the checking account. Either the appellant should be given credit for the $31,000 of non-marital funds he deposited in the account, or the appellee should not be given credit for the funds which she “ran through their checking account” to purchase the sister’s interest in the house. We should either accept the “source-of-funds” theory and “tracing” as recognized in Potter v. Potter, 280 Ark. 38, 655 S.W.2d 382 (1983), or reject it. We should not continue to trip the light fantastic through the law.