Divorce; Custody; Due process; Waiver; Property division; Elahham v Al-Jabban

The court concluded defendant-ex-wife waived her challenge to the trial court’s custody ruling and that the record did not support her argument. It also held that the trial court’s factual findings as to its property division “were not clearly erroneous, and its decision was fair and equitable under the circumstances.” The trial court awarded the parties joint legal and physical custody of their children. Defendant argued that it “erred and violated her right to due process by preventing her from presenting” certain newly discovered evidence at the bench trial. She further contended, by extension, that because excluding this evidence was not in the “children’s best interests, the trial court necessarily failed to properly address the best-interest factors.” She asserted the evidence “warranted her receiving sole legal and physical custody.” The court found that her argument was “unsupported by the record and, in any event, was waived by the parties’ pretrial stipulated custody agreement.” The trial court entered that “agreement into the record. This left only certain property issues to be addressed; custody was no longer an issue for the bench trial.” And the record showed no “attempt by defendant to subsequently challenge the custody agreement.” As to the property division, she asserted “she should have received the entirety of the $14,000 from selling the marital home, as an offset to the depletion of her retirement account” and that it appeared the trial court punished “her by improperly relying on perceived marital misconduct.” The court disagreed. There “was no dispute that the landscaping and Peloton bike debts constituted marital debt.” The trial court used “the $14,000 balance from the sale of the marital residence in part to pay off these debts. There also was no dispute that plaintiff solely made mortgage payments on the marital home throughout the divorce proceedings. The trial court determined that because defendant was responsible for half of these payments, plaintiff should be reimbursed. To pay for this reimbursement, [it] simply ordered that defendant’s share of the remaining $14,000 be absorbed by plaintiff. This was actually less than what defendant owed for reimbursement[.]” As to her contention the trial court punished her for “perceived marital misconduct” the record belied this claim. There was no reference to the conduct in question “in the trial court’s findings, or during the entire bench trial[.]” Affirmed.