Court Opinion

ID: 9624163
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 06:52:56.554966+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:05:40.242224
License: Public Domain

NEELY, Justice,
dissenting:
Mr. and Mrs. Holstein married in 1981 when each was almost 50. Instead of insisting upon pages and pages of premarital agreements and careful separation of bank accounts, the Holsteins acted like a family. When Mr. Holstein received a settlement from a personal injury claim that occurred before the marriage, he placed it into a joint account instead of sedulously protecting it as his separate property.1 My previous complaints seem to have fallen on the majority’s deaf ears, but I will keep trying. See Charlton v. Charlton, 186 W.Va. 670, *391413 S.E.2d 911 (1991) (Neely, J. dissenting); Koontz v. Koontz, 183 W.Va. 477, 481, 396 S.E.2d 439, 443 (1990) (Neely, J. dissenting); Whiting v. Whiting, 183 W.Va. 451, 464, 396 S.E.2d 413, 426 (1990).
Imagine Mr. X and Ms. Y, each 50 years of age, preparing to marry one another. Mr. X has $50,000 in various bank accounts that he has acquired through the course of his life. Ms. Y owns a house, with 10 years left on the mortgage, in which she has accrued $50,000 in equity. Mr. X’s know-it-all friend, Mr. Z, takes him out to dinner one night and tells him all about this Court’s previous decision in Whiting and its progeny. He gets Mr. X all upset about the gold-digging Ms. Y. Thereafter, Mr. X insists upon keeping his $50,000 in separate bank accounts. Ms. Y, then, insists on a written agreement providing that the house is her separate property. Now, instead of looking forward to a lifetime of happy marriage, the parties must bring in their lawyers and negotiate over who owns what. This is not fiction but the reality that the majority’s opinions have created.
Whiting v. Whiting must be overruled!

. The majority declines to discuss Mr. Holstein’s claim that “because the farm was purchased with money that came from the settlement of his premarital personal injury claim, it was his separate property." Slip op. at 2. This clearly falls under the definition of separate property in W.Va.Code, 48-2-l(f)(4) [1990], Of course, the majority has long since stopped citing W.Va. Code, 48 — 2—1(f) [1990] for fear that it might get in the way of further "interpretations" of Whiting.
For the record, W.Va.Code, 48-2-1© [1990] provides:
(f) "Separate property” means:
(1)Property acquired by a person before marriage; or
(2) Property acquired by a person during marriage in exchange for separate property which was acquired before the marriage; or
(3) Property acquired by a person during marriage, but excluded from treatment as marital property by a valid agreement of the parties entered into before or during the marriage; or
(4) Property acquired by a party during marriage by gift, bequest, devise, descent or distribution; or
(5) Property acquired by a party during a marriage but after the separation of the parties and before the granting of a divorce, annulment or decree of separate maintenance; and
*391(6) Any increase in the value of separate property as defined in subdivision (1), (2), (3), (4) or (5) of this subsection which is due to inflation or to a change in market value resulting from conditions outside the control of the parties.