What to do with No Valuation at All?
August 10, 2019 § Leave a comment
James and Shann Martin consented to a divorce on the ground of irreconcilable differences, and left custody and equitable distribution to the judge for adjudication. Following a hearing the chancellor awarded James custody of their son and ownership of 35 acres of land that had been gifted to them by James’s parents. The judge also ordered James to pay Shann $20,000 for some improvements she had made to the property. Shann appealed.
In her appeal, Shann contended that the division of the marital estate was inequitably in James’s favor.
In Martin v. Martin, handed down August 6, 2019, the COA by Judge McCarty affirmed, and in its opinion turned its attention to a significant wrinkle in the record:
¶9. Shann contends that the distribution of assets was overwhelmingly in Mitch’s favor. Yet the record does not contain financial information to support this argument. Despite numerous requests from the chancery court, neither party provided the court with a single valuation of the assets at issue. There was no testimony of the market value of the real property. Appraisals were never conducted. Both parties failed to provide an amount of the tax refunds, the amount of money which was invested into the marital home, or by whom the money was invested. Indeed, the chancery court even noted in the divorce decree that “the Court [was] perplexed at the lack of evidence concerning property values.”
¶10. It is incumbent upon the parties, not the chancery court, to prepare the evidence needed to clearly make a valuation judgment. Stribling [v. Stribling], 906 So. 2d [863] at 870 (¶25). “Where a party fails to provide accurate information, or cooperate in the valuation of assets, the [chancery court] is entitled to proceed on the best information available.” Id.; see also Messer v. Messer, 850 So. 2d 161, 170 (¶43) (Miss. Ct. App. 2003) (“This Court has held that when a chancellor makes a valuation judgment based on proof that is less than ideal, it will be upheld as long as there is some evidence to support his conclusion.”). “To the extent that further evidence would have aided the chancellor in these decisions, the fault lies with the parties and not the chancellor.” Ward v. Ward, 825 So. 2d 713, 719 (¶21) (Miss. Ct. App. 2002).
¶11. Where, as here, a chancery court “appears to have fully explored the available proof and arrived at the best conclusions that [they] could . . . we can discover no abuse of discretion in those efforts that would require us to reverse [their] valuation determinations.” Dunaway v. Dunaway, 749 So. 2d 1112, 1121 (¶28) (Miss. Ct. App. 1999). The chancery court used the information provided by the parties to conduct a Ferguson analysis. “To the extent that the evidence on which the [chancery court] based [its] opinion was less informative than it could have been, we lay that at the feet of the litigants and not the [chancery court].” Id.
Bravo. The chancellor said that she was “perplexed” the lack of valuation evidence. That’s a good word. Amen.
In this district we do not allow the parties to obtain a trial date until they have presented the court with a consolidated asset list showing every asset with each party’s opinion of values and whether or not each asset is marital. If a party delays unreasonably in providing the information the court sets a deadline after which that party may not present proof of values at trial, and the other party’s values are accepted.
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