Valuing the marital assets of a couple that is engaged in divorce proceedings can be extremely challenging if one spouse owns a share of a business. It is rarely, if ever, a simple cut-and-dried case of dividing that share in half. In the case of Rumpel v. Skaggs, for example, a couple was married in the early 1990s and at the time of their wedding, the husband was working in law enforcement. After they had been married for two years, the husband retired from the police force and received a full pension.
Shortly after retiring, the husband and a business partner formed an incorporated company in an effort to buy a large piece of land. There was a strip mall on the land and the two partners leased three of the available commercial spaces in the mall to businesses that were not related to the corporation they had formed. The partners did very well for themselves and after several years of running the businesses together decided to part ways. Per Rule 36 of the Rules of Civil Procedure in Alabama, the husband’s (the Plaintiff) wife (the Defendant) made two Requests for Admission on the part of the Plaintiff. The first was in regard to the amount that his share of the business was worth and the other was in regard to an amount that he had agreed to pay his former partner for his interest in the corporation.
The plaintiff refused both requests and after separate appraisals were done on the business, with that of the Plaintiff’s being lower than the actual value, the Defendant was ordered to pay $246,000 plus fees and alimony over a period of 6 years. After an appeal on that ruling by the Plaintiff to the Alabama state supreme court, it was determined that a state statute had been misapplied by the trial judge and the case was remanded for additional proceedings that are as of yet still pending.
