Daniel-Elliott and Daniel

394 June 26, 2024 No. 424

IN THE COURT OF APPEALS OF THE

STATE OF OREGON

In the Matter of the Marriage of

Samantha Kay DANIEL-ELLIOTT,

Petitioner-Appellant,

and

Westin John DANIEL,

Respondent-Respondent.

Lane County Circuit Court

21DR17499; A180631

Kamala H. Shugar, Judge.

Argued and submitted March 6, 2024.

George W. Kelly argued the cause and filed the briefs for

appellant.

Lauren Saucy argued the cause and filed the brief for

respondent.

Before Aoyagi, Presiding Judge, Joyce, Judge, and

Jacquot, Judge.

JOYCE, J.

Reversed and remanded.

Cite as 333 Or App 394 (2024) 395

JOYCE, J.

In this dissolution case, wife appeals from a sup-

plemental judgment granting husband a $91,662.78 money

award. Wife asserts that the trial court erred in granting

husband the money award because the court’s decision mod-

ified the property division set out in the original dissolution

judgment, and the trial court lacked authority to do so. We

agree and reverse.1

The court entered the judgment dissolving the mar-

riage on June 9, 2022. As relevant to this appeal, that judg-

ment awarded the marital residence to wife but required

her to refinance the loan on the home to remove husband

from the existing mortgage obligation; the judgment also

determined how the parties were to divide the net equity

in the house and explained that the costs associated with

completing the refinance were to be split evenly between the

parties. Because the provision is central to the question on

appeal, we set out the relevant portions:

“11. REAL PROPERTY DIVISION. Wife is awarded

the marital residence * * * (hereinafter ‘residence’), free and

clear of any interest of Husband. * * * The following terms

and conditions set forth Husband’s share of the equity in

the residence:

“11.1. Refinance. Wife shall refinance the residence to

remove Husband from the existing mortgage obligation

and pay Husband his equity interest. On or before close

of escrow of Wife’s refinance, Wife shall pay Husband his

share of the remaining net equity, subject to paragraph

11.6.

“11.2. Value of Residence. The value of the residence shall

be determined pursuant to the terms of this provision.

Each party shall select a licensed appraiser * * * to conduct

an independent appraisal of the residence for purposes of

determining value. * * * If the appraised values set forth by

the designated appraisers are different, value of the prop-

erty shall be determined by equally splitting the difference

of the appraised values. * * *

1

Our disposition as to the first assignment of error obviates the need to

address wife’s second assignment of error.

396 Daniel-Elliott and Daniel

“11.3. Mortgage. The Oregon Community Credit Union

mortgage balance as of August 9, 2021, in the amount of

$161,513.24, shall be used in determining the total net

equity of the residence.

“11.4. Wife’s Premarital Equity. Wife is awarded

$152,661.19 as her separate property from the total net

equity, which represents Wife’s premarital interest in the

residence as of June 2015.

“11.5. Division of Net Equity. After reducing the total net

equity by Wife’s premarital share, and except as otherwise

set forth in paragraph 11.6, Wife shall pay Husband an

amount equal to 50% of the remaining net equity. Wife is

awarded the remainder.

“11.6. Costs for Refinance. The parties shall equally be

responsible for the necessary and reasonable costs associ-

ated with closing of Wife’s refinance. At escrow closing, the

parties shall instruct the escrow officer to reduce Husband’s

50% share of the net equity by 50% of the necessary and

reasonable costs.”

The judgment thus required wife to refinance the

home and to pay husband his half of the equity, less 50

percent of the “necessary and reasonable costs” of the refi-

nance. However, husband’s equity interest in the home was

not explicitly quantified in the judgment. Rather, sections

11.2 to 11.5 set out how to calculate husband’s share of the

net equity in the property after the parties obtained inde-

pendent appraisals of the home.

After the court entered the dissolution judgment,

certain circumstances made it difficult for the parties to

proceed under the terms of section 11 of the judgment. First,

after both parties obtained appraisals of the home, husband

objected to wife’s choice of appraiser and, relatedly, to that

appraiser’s valuation. Thus, the parties did not agree on the

numbers that should be used to determine the value of the

home and, because the value of the home was necessary to

calculate husband’s share of the net equity in the home, the

parties also did not agree on the amount that constituted

husband’s half of the equity. Second, by September of 2022,

wife had made several attempts to refinance the home but

had been unable to qualify for a refinance that would allow

her to pull out cash in a sufficient amount to pay husband

Cite as 333 Or App 394 (2024) 397

what she estimated to be his share of the home’s equity.

Thus, wife began the process of trying to sell the home.

Those circumstances, as well as other disagree-

ments, led the parties to file competing motions to enforce

the terms of the dissolution judgment, and both parties

sought contempt sanctions against the other as part of their

respective enforcement motions. Specifically, wife’s motion

requested that the court enforce the portion of the judgment

that required husband to sign a deed to the family home,

and husband’s motion requested that the court enforce the

terms that required wife to refinance the home.

Following a hearing in which both parties testi-

fied and presented evidence, the trial court entered a sup-

plemental judgment. Within the supplemental judgment,

the trial court made a number of findings. First, the trial

court found that both parties agreed on the record during

the hearing that husband’s “net share [of the equity in the

home was] $91,662.78, minus 50 percent of any necessary

and reasonable closing costs associated with [wife’s] refi-

nance of the home.” Second, the court found that the “under-

lying judgment [was] ambiguous as to [husband’s] net share

of the equity in the home, because at the time of the judg-

ment, the two appraisal numbers were not known.” In sup-

port of its finding that the judgment was ambiguous, the

trial court also noted that “two of [wife’s] witnesses testified

that the judgment was ambiguous which prevented them

from clearly assessing [wife’s] qualifications to refinance the

home, or to sell it.” Thus, the trial court reasoned that the

supplemental judgment was “needed to clarify this ambi-

guity for the parties and any professionals they seek to

enlist to help carry out the terms of the judgment.” Third,

although the trial court did not find either wife or husband

in contempt, the trial court did find that husband “willfully

violated the terms of th[e] judgment by refusing to sign the

deed as requested.”

Within the supplemental judgment, the trial court

also entered a money award “in favor of [husband], and

against [wife] for [husband’s] net share of the equity in

the home in the uncontested amount of $91,622.78, minus

50% (percent) of any necessary and reasonable closing costs

398 Daniel-Elliott and Daniel

associated with [wife’s] refinance of the home.” After the

supplemental judgment was entered, the court administra-

tor noted in the register that the supplemental judgment

created a lien, and that husband was granted a monetary

award totaling $91,662.78.

As framed by the parties, the issue on appeal is

whether the trial court’s decision to enter a money award in

favor of husband constituted an impermissible modification

to the original property division that was set out in the par-

ties’ dissolution judgment. Because the issues in this case

are legal in nature, our review is for legal error. Hurtley and

Hurtley, 292 Or App 510, 514, 425 P3d 472 (2018).

With limited exceptions, it has long been the law

in Oregon that a trial court is prohibited from modifying

the property division provisions of a dissolution judgment.

Anderson and Anderson, 65 Or App 16, 19, 670 P2d 170

(1983); Renninger and Renninger, 82 Or App 706, 711, 730

P2d 37 (1986) (noting that a “court has inherent power to

modify the property division provisions of a dissolution

judgment based on fraud, * * * duress or gross inequity, * * *

or breach of fiduciary duty” (internal citations omitted)).

Although a trial court generally may not modify a property

division, a court is permitted to “interpret ambiguous por-

tions of a dissolution judgment, including the property divi-

sion.” Heathman and Heathman, 94 Or App 223, 226-27, 764

P2d 966 (1988). “A provision in a judgment is ambiguous

if it is capable of more than one reasonable interpretation.”

Neal and Neal, 181 Or App 361, 365, 45 P3d 1011 (2002).

However, a trial court is prohibited from “modify[ing] the

property provisions of the judgment in the guise of inter-

preting them.” Heathman, 94 Or App at 226. In other words,

when a trial court determines that a property provision

of a dissolution judgment is ambiguous, it is permitted to

explain the meaning or the intent of that existing ambig-

uous provision, but it is not permitted to make substantive

changes to the original terms of the judgment.

Here, even if the general judgment may be viewed

as “ambiguous” (a point on which we are highly skeptical),

the trial court’s decision to enter a money judgment in favor

of husband went beyond the scope of merely clarifying that

Cite as 333 Or App 394 (2024) 399

ambiguity. That is because, by entering a money award, the

trial court did more than give meaning to the terms govern-

ing the process for calculating husband’s share of the equity;

rather, by entering the money judgment and by creating

a judgment lien in favor of husband, the trial court made

substantive additions to the terms of the property division

that were not contemplated in the original judgment. See

Heathman, 94 Or App at 226 n 2 (explaining that a trial court

has modified a property division if it has added “additional

terms or obligations to those in the original judgment”).

Those substantive additions stem from the debtor-creditor

relationship that arose between the parties when the trial

court created the judgment lien. The creation of that new

relationship constituted a substantive addition to the terms

of the original judgment because it established new rights

and obligations for the parties in their respective roles as a

judgment creditor or debtor. See, e.g., ORS 18.049 (stating

that a judgment creditor is “entitled to recover the expenses

specified in ORS 18.999 that are incurred by the judgment

creditor in collecting on the judgment”). The debtor-creditor

relationship and the rights and obligations flowing from it

were not contemplated in the original dissolution judgment;

thus, the trial court did not merely interpret an existing

ambiguous property-division provision, but rather imper-

missibly added additional terms to the original judgment

when it entered the money award.

In sum, the trial court erred by acting outside of its

authority in granting husband a money award; the court’s

decision effected an impermissible modification of the prop-

erty division that was set out in the original dissolution

judgment. We therefore reverse the supplemental judgment

and remand for further proceedings consistent with this

opinion.

Reversed and remanded.