TN Husband to Pay Higher Alimony In Lieu of Marital Property
Tennessee law case summary on property division and alimony in divorce and family law from the Court of Appeals.
George Edwards v. Alice Edwards – Tennessee divorce, property division, and alimony law
Alice Edwards, the wife, was 39 years old, and the husband, George Edwards, was 36 years old, when they married in April 1991. The husband served in the military for 22 years, beginning in 1974. He also had an associate degree in design technology. The wife had a B.A. degree in health information management and a Master’s degree in public administration. After the husband retired from the military, the parties bought a home in Dyersburg, Tennessee. In July 2010, the wife returned home from a visit to her sister to find the husband in his pajamas and a woman sitting on the couch in a pink negligee. Following a verbal attack by the wife, the husband and the woman left the house. The husband filed for divorce in September 2010 on the grounds of irreconcilable differences and the wife filed a counter-complaint for divorce on the grounds of inappropriate marital conduct and adultery. Both parties eventually moved out of the marital home and it was rented out.
Following a hearing, the trial court made several findings of fact. The court found that the husband had lied about a debt of some $6,000 he claimed to owe to an individual renting the marital home and that he had engaged in inappropriate behavior with another woman (despite his testimony to the contrary). The court also found after the marital home was sold and the mortgage payments completed, the husband had a monthly income of just over $3,200, including his military pension and reasonable expenses of $1,650. The court found that the wife earned $1,278 a month as an adjunct professor and substitute teacher, plus $278 from the husband’s monthly pension, which the parties had agreed on. The wife had $2,200 in monthly expenses, leaving her with a deficiency of $922 per month. The court awarded the wife a divorce based on the husband’s adultery, as well as transitional alimony of $250 per month for 36 months and alimony in futuro in the amount of $750 per month.
The husband filed a motion to alter the decree regarding alimony and the award of part of his pension. He and the wife were married for only seven years of his 22 years of military service. He argued that according to military regulations, a couple must be married for at least 10 years before the military will divide the pension between husband and wife. The wife countered that while this was correct, she and the husband had agreed that she would receive $278 of his pension as part of the “equitable division of marital property,” and the husband received the money from the sale of the marital home. The trial court found that this pension was indeed the husband’s separate property. As a result, the court raised the amount of alimony in futuro by $278 to cover the wife’s monthly expenses.
Alimony instead of pension
The husband appealed the award of alimony, arguing that the trial court circumvented the law by denying the pension payment to the wife while increasing her alimony in the same amount. The appeals court agreed with all of the findings of fact from the trial court, including his adultery, his greater ability to earn an income than his wife and the income and expenses for both him and the wife. The court also disagreed with the husband regarding the upward deviation of his alimony payments. The court noted that the husband himself testified at the trial that the wife should receive $278 of his monthly pension as her marital share of his pension. The court denied the husband’s appeal and affirmed the trial court’s decision.
No. W2011-02305-COA-R3-CV (Tenn. Ct. App. Dec. 12, 2012).
See original opinion for exact language. Legal citations omitted.
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