Stipulated Date When Property Valued Remains Even Over Lengthy Time

Tennessee case summary on property division and classification in divorce.

Melody Crunk Telfer v. George Curtiss Telfer

The husband and wife in this Tennessee case were married in 1985, and the wife filed for divorce in 2010 in Williamson County.  There were numerous disputes over the status of the parties’ assets, and the case was appealed to the Tennessee Court of Appeals in 2013.

The issue in that first appeal was the status of some business entities that had been transferred by the wife’s father.  In the first appeal, the court held that since tax liabilities had been paid with marital assets, the appreciation of those entities constituted a marital asset.  The case was remanded to the trial court to determine the amount of the appreciation.  The lower court set the values, and the husband brought a second appeal, alleging that the trial court had erred in its division and valuation.

The appeals court first noted that review of such findings is de novo, but with a presumption of correctness of factual findings.  He argued that the valuation should have been done as of the date of the divorce, and that the trial court should not have applied a discount due to lack of marketability of the closely held entities.

On the issue of the discount, the appeals court noted that this is often a discretionary decision, depending upon the facts of the case.  In this case, the appeals court found that the decision was within the trial court’s discretion, and for that reason declined to reverse it.

The appeals court then turned to the correct date of valuation.  The parties had originally stipulated that the valuation would be as of 2011.  Because of the drawn out nature of the litigation, the value might have changed, but the appeals court found that there was no good reason to ignore the stipulation.

After addressing some other issues, the appeals court once again remanded the case to determine a few issues still unresolved.  However, it affirmed the business valuation rulings in the case.

No. M2017-00420-COA-R3-CV (Tenn. Ct. App. Mar. 5, 2018).

See original opinion for exact language.  Legal citations omitted.

To learn more, see The Tennessee Divorce Process: How Divorces Work Start to Finish.