Court Opinion

ID: 9777061
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 19:53:10.378885+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:14:15.367817
License: Public Domain

VANCE, Judge,
concurring.
I concur in the result reached by the majority solely because I accept the view of the majority that Sharp v. Sharp, Ky., 516 S.W.2d 875 (1974), and Farmer v. Farmer, Ky., 506 S.W.2d 109 (1974), require that inheritances, gifts, and property owned at the time of marriage must be traced to some asset currently owned by the parties before the inheritances, gifts or previously owned property can be claimed as nonmari-tal property which was later exchanged for other property.
I think this premise should be reexamined. KRS 403.190 does not use the word “trace.” The tracing of one asset into another is a complicated legal and accounting process and, in my opinion, it is inimical to the spirit of marriage.
Marriage connotes sharing, with the concentration upon what is “ours” rather than what is “his” and what is “hers.” It does not bode well for the institution of marriage if each partner must keep in the back of his mind the possible advantage to be obtained by keeping up with and being able to trace every penny brought into the marriage. In addition, the process of tracing is usually so complex that the expense involved cannot be justified when the accumulation is small as in this case.
If either marriage partner has property at the time of marriage, or later acquires property by gift, descent or devise, and that property remains intact at the time of dissolution, assignment of that property as a nonmarital asset is required by statute. If the property owned at the time of marriage, or later acquired by gift, devise, or *670inheritance, is converted into cash and used during the marriage so that it cannot be traced into any asset owned at the time of dissolution, I see no reason why each partner should not still be assigned as nonmari-tal property the value of the property that would otherwise have been regarded as nonmarital property except for the fact that it cannot be traced.
The purpose of the classification of property as marital and nonmarital is to facilitate restoration to each party of his property which was acquired outside of the marriage and to divide that which was accumulated during the marriage.
Regardless of whether assets can be traced, there is no accumulation of property during marriage unless the assets owned by the parties at the time of dissolution have a greater value than the total value of the property owned by them when married added to the value of property later acquired by gift, descent or devise. As long as the parties own at least as much when they separate as they owned before marriage, or acquired by gift or devise, the previously owned property and the gifts and devises have in one way or another changed in form and I would see no difficulty in holding that this changed form constitutes property acquired in exchange for the property previously owned, or acquired by gift or devise, whether the exchange can be actually traced or not.
Great inequity can result from any other course. For example, consider a husband and wife who each have $10,000.00 when married, his in the form of a certificate of deposit and hers in cash. If, when the marriage is dissolved, they own $20,000.00 worth of property in addition to the certificate of deposit, it goes without saying that her original $10,000.00 is included therein although she might find it impossible to trace it.
I would prefer to assign each of them $10,000.00 in nonmarital property rather than to assign the husband the $10,000.00 certificate as nonmarital property and attempt to divide the remainder as nonmari-tal. That is what the trial judge did in this case. I would like to affirm the judgment but I feel bound by the decisions in Sharp and Farmer and therefore must concur in the reversal.