$5,000 / Mo Til Age 65 Then $2,000 / Mo Alimony in Futuro for TN Wife
Tennessee law case summary on alimony, equitable division, and attorney’s fees in Tennessee divorce and family law from the Tennessee Court of Appeals.
Rooney (Pollan) v. Pollan – Tennessee divorce case law summary – 27 Years Married
Lynette Rooney and Edward Pollan were married in 1983 and had two adult children. Edward was the president and half owner of NCC Business Services of America, a debt collection agency. Lynette had originally helped start the company, but became a homemaker after the birth of their children. Lynette suffered from degenerative disk disease and other back problems.
In 2008, Lynette filed a complaint for divorce. She amended the complaint in 2010 and alleged that Edward had engaged in inappropriate marital conduct.
Prior to trial, the parties agreed on a division of the stock in the collection agency. As part of that agreement, Lynette became a half owner, and provisions were made as to how she would be compensated if the business was sold. She also became an employee of the company for eight years, at a salary of $50,000, with full benefits and health insurance.
A trial was held on the remaining issues, and the trial court divided the marital assets 51% to Lynette and 49% to Edward. The court awarded Lynette $5,000 per month in alimony in futuro until she reached age 65, and $2,000 per month after the age of 65. She had requested, but the trial court did not award, an additional $170,000 alimony in solido, to compensate her for Edward’s alleged dissipation of assets.
Lynette had requested that Edward pay her medical insurance after the end of her employment with the company, but this request was denied. The trial court also denied her request for over $115,000 in attorney’s fees and expert witness fees.
Lynette appealed, and raised a number of issues. She first contended that the trial court erred in holding that certain debts were marital assets. She contended that these were debts of the company, and had actually been resolved as part of the agreement regarding the company. But the Court of Appeals noted that the debts referred to in the settlement agreement did not include the debts in question. The Court of Appeals also pointed out that some of these debts were used to satisfy the parties’ tax obligations, so there was nothing unjust about considering them as part of the marital estate.
Similarly, the Court of Appeals held that treating the parties’ credit card debts as part of the marital estate was proper.
Lynette also sought additional alimony in solido, because she contended that the separate agreement regarding the company should not have been taken into consideration in allocating the remaining marital property. In order to illustrate this point, her attorney brought two galvanized buckets to court, and argued that the benefits of the agreement belonged in one bucket, and the remaining marital assets went into the other bucket. Both the trial court and the Court of Appeals rejected this argument. The Court of Appeals noted that “there is a hole in this argument, not to mention the bucket,” because both buckets were part of the marital estate, and the Court determined that the overall award was equitable.
Relying on the same “bucket theory,” Lynette also argued that the alimony award should have been greater. But once again, the court pointed out the error in this theory, and held that the trial court had not abused its discretion in setting the amounts as it had.
The Court of Appeals also affirmed the trial court’s decision not to award alimony in solido because of any alleged dissipation of assets. The Court of Appeals pointed out that there was only very limited testimony about any such alleged dissipation, and that it had not been proven.
The Court of Appeals also ruled that the trial court had not abused its discretion in not ordering Edward to pay for Lynette’s health insurance in 2019, when her employment with the company would come to an end. Both the trial court and Court of Appeals ruled that this was “too speculative” to include in the decree.
Lynette also argued that the trial court erred in awarding her only $50,000 in attorney’s fees, rather than the full $115,000 she had requested. But the Court of Appeals held that this determination was well within the trial court’s discretion.
Accordingly, the Court of Appeals affirmed the judgment, other than a mathematical error regarding a 2010 tax liability.
Rooney v. Pollan, No. M2011-01896-COA-R3-CV (Tenn. Ct. App,, July 3, 2012).
See original opinion for exact language. Legal citations omitted.
Memphis divorce lawyer, Miles Mason, Sr., JD, CPA practices family law exclusively and is founder of the Miles Mason Family Law Group, PLC, which handles Tennessee family law matters including divorce, child support, alimony, prenuptial agreements, child custody, parental relocation, child support modification, alimony modification, and divorces including business valuation and forensic accounting issues.
