Divorce; Property division; Whether a party’s pension was a marital asset; MCL 552.18(1); Pickering v. Pickering; Treatment of a home; Valuation date; Woodington v. Shokoohi; Consideration of manifestations of intent to lead separate lives in apportioning the marital estate; Byington v. Byington; Whether a setoff was inequitable

While the court held that the trial court committed a legal error in ruling that defendant-ex-husband’s pension was not a marital asset, reversal was not required. The trial court did not err in determining that the parties’ second home (the 2006 home) was a marital asset and by setting off the money plaintiff-ex-wife received from its sale against the value of their 1994 home. It also did not err in selecting a valuation date for the 1994 home or an annuity, or in finding that defendant’s inheritance money used to pay off a mortgage was not a marital asset. Further, it did not err in awarding him an account that was worth approximately the same amount as the marital asset plaintiff dissipated, and the court held that its overall property division was equitable and fair in light of its findings. Thus, it affirmed the divorce judgment. Defendant’s “pension was clearly marital property because” he accrued it during the marriage. But the trial court had “discretion in its treatment of a pension.” Given that the pension was in pay status, the court could not find, based on the record, “that the trial court abused its discretion by determining that the pension should be treated as defendant’s income and awarded only as spousal support. Moreover, the trial court properly considered the situation and circumstances of the parties in determining that plaintiff was not entitled to an award of spousal support, and” she did not challenge this finding. The trial court believed that she elected “not to work after she began receiving the disbursements from her father’s asbestos lawsuit, and while” her doctor testified her condition worsened in the last few months of 2018, the court was “not left with a definite and firm conviction that the trial court erred by finding that plaintiff could work at least part-time . . . .” As to the totality of the property division, plaintiff was awarded “the $120,000 that she took from the joint nest-egg account, the proceeds of the 2006 home totaling approximately $20,000, and half of the marital portion of the” annuity. Defendant was awarded his “account of approximately $124,683, the marital home for which he would have received a profit of $20,000 in 2014, and the other half of the marital portion of the” annuity. This was an approximately equal division. As to “nonmarital assets, the award was not required to be equitable.”