Divorce; Property settlement; Whether a bank account should have been treated as marital property; Claim that a party contributed to the improvement of a parcel of real property; MCL 552.401; Separate funds invested in a parcel of real property

The court held that given the trial court’s factual findings as to the savings account at issue, its ruling awarding the entirety of the account to plaintiff-ex-wife as her separate property was fair and equitable. It also upheld the trial court’s decision to not invade a separate asset (a parcel of real property) belonging to plaintiff under MCL 552.401. But because of the inadequate record as to its findings and reasoning for distributing another parcel of real property, the court reversed the trial court’s ruling in this regard and remanded. At issue was the parties’ property settlement as it related to a bank account and two parcels of real property. Defendant-ex-husband argued that the “savings account should have been treated as marital property and divided equally because plaintiff did not prove that it was separate property. The only factual dispute as to this savings account was the source of the funds it contained.” The court noted that resolution of this factual dispute “was of crucial importance to the analysis because ‘income earned by one spouse during the duration of the marriage is generally presumed to be marital property,’ . . . while ‘workers’ compensation benefits awarded for periods before the marriage or after its dissolution are akin to a party’s individual earnings and are to be considered separate property because those earnings fall outside the beginning and the end of the marriage.’” The only evidence the trial court was presented as to the source of the money in the account was the parties’ conflicting testimony It “ruled without further explanation that the savings account would be awarded to plaintiff as ‘her sole property.’” Therefore, it “necessarily credited plaintiff’s testimony over defendant’s testimony because plaintiff’s testimony involved a claim that the money was obtained before the marriage and thus was separate property, while defendant claimed in his testimony that the money was earned during the marriage and thus was marital property.” The court was not left “with a definite and firm conviction that a mistake was made.” But it was left with a definite and firm conviction that a mistake was made as to the Knox Road property, given that “the factual findings on which the trial court based its ruling” as to that property “were clearly erroneous because they were unsupported by the record evidence.” Affirmed in part, reversed in part, and remanded.