Al-Fikey v. Obaiah

Citations

• 196 Conn. App. 13

Syllabus

The defendant appealed to this court from the judgment of the trial court dissolving his marriage to the plaintiff and issuing certain financial orders. Held: 1. The trial court's finding that the defendant was at fault for the irretrievable breakdown of the marriage was not clearly erroneous; sufficient evi- dence supported the court's finding, including evidence that the defen- dant abruptly left the marital home with little explanation. 2. The trial court properly found that the defendant was intentionally under- employed when calculating his earning capacity: even though the defen- dant claimed that the court erred in basing his earning capacity on his prior work as an information technology consultant because he claimed his qualifications were outmoded to work in that field, this contention relied on the defendant's testimony regarding the amount and sources of his income, which the court expressly found was not credible, there was little support in the record for the defendant's claim that he could not pursue additional employment in his field, and there was evidence that the defendant had, as recently as 2013, worked in the field of information technology, but had done little since then to improve his qualifications or pursue additional employment in the field; thus, it was not clearly erroneous for the court to to calculate its support orders on the basis of the defendant's earning capacity rather than his actual income. 3. The defendant could not prevail on his claim that the trial court improperly determined which properties were part of the marital estate; although the defendant claimed that numerous properties should not have been included in the marital estate because the plaintiff made no contribution to the acquisition of these properties and the defendant did not have title to these properties when the marriage was dissolved, the court recognized that the marital home was foreclosed because of the defen- dant's misconduct and, in lieu of the marital