Court Opinion

ID: 9947201
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2024-03-03 15:10:07.311659+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T14:26:11.625813
License: Public Domain

Supreme Court of Texas
                            ══════════
                             No. 22-0242
                            ══════════

                           Eve Lynn Baker,
                               Petitioner,

                                   v.

                           Terry Lee Bizzle,
                              Respondent

   ═══════════════════════════════════════
               On Petition for Review from the
       Court of Appeals for the Second District of Texas
   ═══════════════════════════════════════

      JUSTICE LEHRMANN, joined by Justice Busby and Justice Young,
concurring.

      The parties present the Court with a binary option: either the
trial court’s email to the parties before Baker’s death qualified as a
rendition of judgment dividing the parties’ marital estate and the
divorce decree should be affirmed in its entirety, or the email did not
qualify as a rendition and the court of appeals correctly dismissed the
entire divorce action as moot. The Court agrees with Bizzle and the
court of appeals and dismisses the entire divorce action as moot. I too
agree with Bizzle’s premise—the email was not a public announcement
of the trial court’s decision and thus did not suffice as a rendition with
respect to the property division. Further, I agree with the Court that
Baker’s death mooted the need for a just-and-right division of the
marital property. Ante at 14.
       However, I would add that the parties’ marital status, orally
pronounced by the trial court before Baker’s death, became final upon
her death. The law does not, and we should not, mandate the retroactive
“undoing” of this status adjudication. However, neither party sought a
judgment solely on the parties’ status; in fact, both parties took the
position at oral argument that the status adjudication of a divorce and
the property division incidental to a divorce are inseverable and that the
status adjudication could not survive Baker’s death without a property
division. Thus, it would be improper for the Court to grant such relief.
I therefore concur in the Court’s judgment and join its opinion, but I
write separately on this important issue. As discussed below, when a
trial court with jurisdiction grants a divorce but later loses jurisdiction
to divide the marital estate, the judgment of divorce may remain intact
despite the dismissal of the collateral issues.

                                        I

       A suit for dissolution of marriage presents several issues for
resolution by the trial court, including the status of the parties, see TEX.
FAM. CODE §§ 6.001–.007, and a “just and right” division of the marital
property, see id. § 7.001. 1 When a party to a divorce proceeding dies

       1 If necessary, issues involving child conservatorship and support
obligations are also a mandated part of a divorce proceeding. TEX. FAM. CODE
§ 6.406(b) (“If the parties are the parents of a child, . . . and the child is not

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before the trial court has resolved any of those issues, the unsurprising
result is dismissal on mootness grounds. Whatley v. Bacon, 649 S.W.2d
297, 298 (Tex. 1983). But what happens if a party dies after the trial
court has expressly rendered judgment on the status question?
Although that order is technically interlocutory because it does not
dispose of all claims and all parties, the status adjudication is finalized,
rather than subject to dismissal, by one party’s death.
       Conceptually, it helps to sort the pertinent “claims” in a divorce
into two buckets: the first encompasses the adjudication of the parties’
legal status (i.e., their status as married or divorced), and the second
encompasses collateral matters (i.e., property division and SAPCR
issues). The Family Code understandably requires the issues in both
buckets to be addressed in a final decree. See TEX. FAM. CODE § 7.001.
Without a division of the marital estate, the property is left without clear
legal ownership—bad for the parties and bad for society.                 The two
buckets are bound together in the Family Code because it would be both
inefficient and impractical to allow parties to be divorced without a clear
grasp of who owns what.
       Those practical considerations fall away when a party dies after
the rendition of divorce but before the rendition of the property division.
In that case, the deceased party’s estate immediately vests in her

under the continuing jurisdiction of another court . . . , the suit for dissolution
of a marriage must include a suit affecting the parent–child relationship . . . .”).
A Suit Affecting the Parent-Child Relationship (“SAPCR”) was not necessary
in the divorce proceeding at issue.

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devisees or heirs. 2    See TEX. EST. CODE §§ 101.001–.002.           And the
deceased party’s status as married or divorced at the time of death can
have a significant effect on distribution of her estate. For example, if a
person gets divorced after making a will, then the will’s provisions are
read as if the former spouse had failed to survive her, unless the will
expressly provides otherwise. Id. § 123.001(b)(1). A divorce also revokes
provisions in certain trust instruments executed by the deceased person
before the divorce.     Id. § 123.052.     Intestacy laws apply differently
depending on whether the deceased person left a surviving spouse. Id.
§ 201.001–.003.     Nontestamentary assets are likewise affected; the
Family Code places conditions on the validity of a provision in a life
insurance policy issued before a divorce naming the former spouse as a
beneficiary. TEX. FAM. CODE § 9.301.
       We stated in Dunn v. Dunn that a spouse’s death following
rendition of a divorce judgment does not moot the case, which may be
appealed, because “the property rights of the parties would be
significantly affected depending upon whether the marriage was held to
have been terminated by divorce decree or by death.” 439 S.W.2d 830,

       2 Because the parties’ community property is not divided in the divorce

in this scenario, they may be treated as tenants in common or joint owners of
that property for purposes of evaluating the deceased party’s estate. See S.C.
v. M.B., 650 S.W.3d 428, 440 (Tex. 2022); see also Busby v. Busby, 457 S.W.2d
551, 554 (Tex. 1970) (“It is well settled that where, as here, a divorce decree
fails to provide for a division of community property, the husband and wife
become tenants in common or joint owners thereof.”). While the Family Code
contains an alternative mechanism for obtaining a just and right division of
property not divided in the original divorce decree, see TEX. FAM. CODE § 9.201,
as noted, the need for such a division is mooted when one of the parties dies,
as happened here; thus, Section 9.201 is not implicated.

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834 (Tex. 1969) (noting that either the living spouse or a representative
of the deceased spouse could have attacked the judgment for error under
the predecessor to Texas Rule of Appellate Procedure 7.1(a), which
provides that “[i]f a party to a civil case dies after the trial court renders
judgment but before the case has been finally disposed of on appeal, the
appeal may be perfected, and the appellate court will proceed to
adjudicate the appeal as if all parties were alive”). Although the spouse
in Dunn died after the trial court had divided the property, our
reasoning for rejecting mootness in that case applies equally to the
situation before us, where a spouse died after the rendition of divorce
but before rendition of the property division.
       Further, although divorce and property-division claims are
inseverable for some purposes, they are not inseverable for all purposes.
In Dawson-Austin v. Austin, we addressed the not-uncommon situation
in which the trial court presiding over a divorce proceeding lacks
personal jurisdiction over one of the spouses. 968 S.W.2d 319 (Tex.
1998). The trial court denied the wife’s special appearance and signed
a final decree, and the court of appeals affirmed. Id. at 321. In this
Court, the husband argued in pertinent part that the special appearance
was properly denied because it was “well settled in this State that the
division of a marital estate is not a claim severable from the rest of a
divorce proceeding.” Id. at 324. Thus, he contended, the wife’s special
appearance to an inseverable portion of the proceeding constituted a
general appearance. Id.
       We rejected that categorical understanding of the so-called “well
settled” rule, noting that the cases cited for complete inseverability of a

                                      5
divorce adjudication and division of the marital estate all did so in the
context of Texas Rules of Civil Procedure 41 (Misjoinder and
Non-Joinder of Parties), 174 (Consolidation; Separate Trials), and 320
(Motion [for New Trial] and Action of Court Thereon). Id. In fact, we
stated explicitly that “[n]o case holds that claims of divorce and division
of property do not involve severable jurisdictional issues.” Id.
       To the contrary, we explained, “a court [may] have jurisdiction to
grant a divorce—an adjudication of parties’ status—without having
jurisdiction to divide their property—an adjudication of parties’ rights.”
Id. (citing Estin v. Estin, 334 U.S. 541, 549 (1948)); see also TEX. FAM.
CODE § 6.308(a) (“A court in which a suit for dissolution of a marriage is
filed may exercise its jurisdiction over those portions of the suit for
which it has authority.”). 3 In remanding the case, we instructed the trial
court to render judgment divorcing the parties and dismissing all other
claims for want of jurisdiction. Dawson-Austin, 968 S.W.2d at 328.
Because the claims involved “severable jurisdictional issues,” a
judgment granting the divorce but not dividing the property was
perfectly valid. Id. at 324.

       3 This holding is consistent with the well-settled understanding that

divorce proceedings implicate both in rem and in personam jurisdiction. See,
e.g., Dosamantes v. Dosamantes, 500 S.W.2d 233, 236 (Tex. App.—Texarkana
1973, writ dism’d) (“Divorce actions are not mere in personam actions, but are
quasi in rem.” (citing Williams v. North Carolina, 317 U.S. 287 (1942))). An
action in rem “determin[es] the status of a thing, and therefore the rights of
persons generally with respect to that thing.” In rem, BLACK’S LAW
DICTIONARY (11th ed. 2019); City of Conroe v. San Jacinto River Auth., 602
S.W.3d 444, 458 (Tex. 2020) (“An in rem action affects the interests of all
persons in the world in the thing. . . .”). In a divorce proceeding, the “thing” is
the marriage, and the trial court adjudicates the status of that marriage.

                                        6
      This case presents a different kind of jurisdictional problem, but
in my view, the result is the same. The trial court’s pronouncement of
divorce should not cease to have legal significance because of the
subsequent death of a party. The party’s death can and should finalize
and sever the judgment of divorce from the mooted remaining issues. As
the Court correctly notes, Baker’s estate did not go away; it must be
distributed to her heirs. Ante at 14 n.33. And when a person’s status at
their death is divorced, their property should be dispersed in accordance
with that status.

                                   II

      Divorce proceedings are certainly personal—both in a colloquial
and legal sense. Accordingly, the trial court could not divide Baker and
Bizzle’s marital property pursuant to the Family Code after Baker’s
death. However, the lack of jurisdiction to divide the marital estate
because the claim became moot does not legally or logically invalidate
the prior status adjudication of the parties—the trial court had
jurisdiction to render the parties divorced and did so. Still, because
neither party requested entry of judgment divorcing the parties without
a corresponding property division, and neither party requests that we
order the trial court to grant such relief, I concur in the Court’s
judgment.

                                        Debra H. Lehrmann
                                        Justice

OPINION FILED: March 1, 2024

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