Husband’s Offer to Let Wife Have House Was Not Accepted, Remained Marital Property
Wife did not accept husband’s offer of house. House remained marital property.
Tennessee case summary on alimony and property classification in divorce.
Cassandra Burks v. Gregory B. Burks
The husband and wife in this Hamilton County, Tennessee, case were married in 1995 and had three children. The husband was a personal injury attorney whose earnings for the four years prior to the divorce were $1.68 million per year.
The wife filed for divorce in 2018, and the case lay dormant for about two years while they sought the assistance of a marriage therapist. At the therapist’s suggestion, the husband gave the wife a handwritten document in which he agreed to give up his interest in the marital residence if he ever cheated on her again, in consideration of the wife reconciling and dropping the divorce lawsuit.
The wife never took any action to drop the divorce case, but it was dismissed by the court the next year for failure to prosecute.
Shortly thereafter, the wife learned that the husband was seeing another woman, and she filed a motion to reinstate the case.
The court considered the husband’s handwritten document, but found that the wife never signed it. Instead, she stated that she was going to take it home and think about it. Also, the wife never moved to voluntarily dismiss the original divorce case, as called for by the document. For this reason, it ruled that the document did not apply, and that the residence was marital property.
The trial court divided the marital property, and also awarded the wife alimony. She received transitional alimony of $13,000 per month for eight years, plus alimony in solido in the amount of $229,000. After some post-trial motions, the wife appealed to the Tennessee Court of Appeals, which first addressed whether the handwritten document constituted a contract.
The wife argued that it was a “textbook unilateral contract,” and that she accepted by performing by discontinuing pursuit of the divorce case. But the husband argued that she took no affirmative action to drop it, she never signed the agreement, and she never consented to the terms.
The appeals court agreed with the wife that the contract met the elements of a unilateral contract. It went on, however, to find that it required her to take two separate actions. First, she must “drop” the pending lawsuit. It held that failing to prosecute the case was not the same as “dropping” it. Therefore, it held that the house remained marital property.
The wife next argued that she was entitled to alimony in futuro, rather than transitional alimony.
In this case, the husband had a greater ability to earn. But the property division had given the wife about $2.2 million. Along with the house, the lower court had held that the wife could easily maintain her lifestyle.
Upon its review of the evidence, the appeals court held that the evidence did not preponderate against this finding. Therefore, it affirmed the lower court’s ruling.
The appeals court also held that the lower court had properly declined to award the wife her attorney’s fees, and it also denied attorney’s fees for the appeal.
For these reasons, the Court of Appeals affirmed the lower court in all respects.
No. E2022-00776-COA-R3-CV (Tenn. Ct. App. Mar. 7, 2024).
See original opinion for exact language. Legal citations omitted.
