Court Opinion

ID: 9771081
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 16:31:25.576391+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:31:24.855172
License: Public Domain

Tom Glaze, Justice, concurring. I concur, but do so only because Goode v. Goode, 286 Ark. 463, 692 S.W.2d 757 (1985), and Bunt v. Bunt, 294 Ark. 507, 744 S.W.2d 718 (1988) — both 4-3 decisions — support the result reached by the majority opinion. My actual view is that the rationale upon which Goode and Bunt are premised is erroneous. However, eleven years have passed and the General Assembly has failed to fully address and correct the problems raised and discussed in the dissents in those cases, so it appears time for me to join precedent.1  My main disagreement with the majority opinion and the cases it cites has to do with the consistent failure of those cases to mention, much less follow, the plain language of Arkansas’s marital-property statute. In this respect, Ark. Code Ann. § 9-12-315(a)(1)(A) (Repl. 1998), reads: [A]t the time a divorce decree is entered, all marital property shall be distributed one-half to each party unless the court finds such a division to be inequitable. (Emphasis added.) Ark. Code Ann. § 9-12-315(b) then provides that “marital property” means all property acquired by either spouse subsequent to the marriage. In construing this 1979 marital-property law, our court established the rule in 1983 that all marital property must be distributed when the parties’ divorce decree is entered. Forrest v. Forrest, 279 Ark. 115, 649 S.W.2d 173 (1983). The majority opinion cites Mason v. Funderburk, 247 Ark. 521, 446 S.W.2d 543 (1969), to support the proposition that appellant Harry McDermott’s contingent-fee contracts contained enforceable property rights in which appellee Rhonda McDermott has divisible and distributable marital property interests. In reality, appellee has nothing more than an inchoate interest in the contingent-fee contracts the appellant entered into with third parties, and unless those contracts actually produced benefits of some determinable value during the marriage, no property rights can be vested or distributed as marital property at the time of divorce. In short, under the language of our statute, § 9-12-315, and all the relevant cases interpreting it, appellee is only entitled to marital property that has vested and is distributable when the parties’ divorce decree is entered. See Day v. Day, 281 Ark. 261, 663 S.W.2d 719 (1984) (court held husband’s vested pension benefits were marital property); Gentry v. Gentry, 282 Ark. 413, 668 S.W.2d 947 (1984) (court held husband’s pension distributable as marital property subject to distribution where all requirements for receiving benefits occurred during marriage, husband was fully vested and he was receiving benefits at the time of divorce); Morrison v. Morrison, 286 Ark. 353, 692 S.W.2d 601 (1985) (court held where, during marriage, husband with marital earnings purchased an annuity policy that paid monthly disability payments and he was receiving $1,165.00 per month at the time of the parties’ divorce, such monthly benefits actually being paid were distributable as marital property); Liles v. Liles, 289 Ark. 159, 711 S.W.2d 447 (1986) (court held a liquidated Jones Act claim reduced to settlement was distributable as marital property at the time of divorce). (Emphasis added.) From my research, the Goode and Bunt decisions are the only ones that fail to require marital property to be, at the minimum, liquidated or vested so the property can be distributed at the time of the parties’ divorce. In my opinion, those two decisions are simply inconsistent with the plain terms of § 9-12-315 and other cases interpreting marital property. Hopefully, the General Assembly may still act to give clarity to this statute where our court has failed. Until that happens or until this court realizes its errors in Goode and Bunt, I will concur in this and future cases where the rationale and holdings in Goode and Bunt appear controlling. Smith, J., joins this concurring opinion.   In fairness to the General Assembly, I do note that, after the Goode decision, the General Assembly corrected the Goode holding to the extent it excluded benefits received or to be received from a workers’ compensation claim, personal injury claim, or social security claim, when those benefits are for any degree of permanent disability or future medical expenses. See Acts 676 of 1987 and 1167 of 1991, codified at Ark. Code Ann. § 9-12-315 (Repl. 1998). In other words, the General Assembly provided that unliquidated or expectancy claims or benefits representing permanent disability or future medical expenses are excepted from the “acquired” marital property provision.