Not Dissipation of Assets Transferring to Joint Account w/ Son

Tennessee case summary on dissipation and appreciation of separate property in divorce.

Lori Ann Amacher v. Stanley Dwight Amacher

The husband and wife in this Franklin County, Tennessee, case were married in 1981.  They had two children, both of whom had reached the age of majority prior to their 2014 divorce.  The husband had formed a general contracting firm about a year before the marriage and worked as a municipal and utility contractor.  The wife worked as a lab technician until 1981, but she was a stay-at-home mother during the marriage.  She did some work for the contracting firm during the marriage.

The wife filed for divorce about a year after the parties had separated, and they continued living separately as the divorce case faced a number of delays.  The husband lived in the marital home and ceased operating the contracting business.  The wife purchased a home after separation.  The total marital estate exceeded $2 million.

Trial was held in 2019 before Judge Melissa T. Blevins-Willis.  After the final judgment, the wife brought an appeal to the Tennessee Court of Appeals and raised a number of issues.

The first issue that the appellate court tackled was the appreciation of the wife’s home.  The trial court had classified this as marital property, but the wife argued that it should have been treated as her separate property.  The wife had purchased the house for $130,000 after the separation, and at the time of trial, it was valued at about $268,000.  The initial purchase price was her separate property, since she had used the proceeds from her separate CD to make the purchase.  She testified that she had used an additional $60,000 of her separate funds to do renovations.  The husband had also spent about $20,000 for the improvements, and the husband testified that he “kind of designed” some of them.

Unfortunately, the appeals court concluded that the lower court had failed to make sufficient factual findings to support the classification.  Therefore, the appeals court sent the case back to the lower court to make specific determinations.

The appeals court then addressed a number of issues relating to the husband’s properties before turning to the issue of dissipation.  The wife argued that the husband had dissipated assets by transferring about $150,000 to his son, and for borrowing money from the contracting company.

The husband argued that he had actually transferred money to a joint account with the son because the wife was “threatening and unstable.”  The husband pointed out that the bank statements were in evidence, and that they showed that there had been no transfer to the son from this account.  While the bank statements were not before the appellate court, it concluded that the wife had not met her burden to show that there had been dissipation.  Similarly, the court concluded that there was nothing about the husband’s loan transaction with the company that was indicative of dissipation.

After addressing the other property division and alimony issues present in the case, the Court of Appeals remanded the case to the lower court.

No. M2019-02251-COA-R3-CV (Tenn. Ct. App. Jan. 27,  2021).

See original opinion for exact language.  Legal citations omitted.

To learn more, see Property Division in Tennessee Divorce.