Stephens v. Stephens

Accrued investment earnings or appreciation of nonmarital assets during the marriage are presumed marital unless the party seeking the classification of the growth as nonmarital proves that the growth is readily identifiable and traceable to the nonmarital portion of the account and the growth is not due to the active efforts of either spouse.In this dissolution action, Husband, the cofounder and president of a C corporation who owned thirty-four percent of its stock, argued that none the nearly $5 million in appreciation of his stock interest during the parties’ twenty-five-year marriage was subject to equitable division. The trial court found that Husband’s thirty-four percent ownership interest in the corporation was, in its entirety, nonmarital. The Supreme Court reversed the division of the C corporation property, holding that, based on the active appreciation rule, the court should not have excluded the corporation of the marital estate. View "Stephens v. Stephens" on Justia Law