Casiraghi v. Casiraghi

Citations

• 200 Conn. App. 771

Syllabus

The plaintiff, whose marriage to the defendant previously had been dis- solved, appealed to this court from the judgment of the trial court granting the defendant's motions for contempt. He claimed that the court improperly determined that he wilfully had failed to comply with his financial obligations to the defendant despite a lack of any finding by the court regarding his assertion that he lacked the ability to pay and found that his investment in a certain franchise, C Co., breached the parties' separation agreement despite also finding that he was current on his financial obligations to the defendant at the time that the invest- ment was made. Held: 1. The trial court's findings that the plaintiff engaged in wilful violations of his financial obligations were clearly erroneous and it was an abuse of discretion for the court not to have considered the issue of the plaintiff's ability to pay or to have rejected that defense before finding that his failure to meet his financial obligations was wilful: the plaintiff unques- tionably raised as a defense that he no longer could fully satisfy his financial obligations as set forth in the dissolution judgment because he had suffered a considerable drop in income due to health problems, and, in support, provided evidence regarding his finances; moreover, the court expressly credited some of the plaintiff's evidence in its written decision and made no indication that it did not credit any of the financial information provided by the plaintiff and the defendant provided no contrary financial records to the court, and the court's finding of wil- fulness stood in direct contradiction to the facts found related to the plaintiff's ability to pay; accordingly, the plaintiff met his burden of both raising the inability to pay defense and presenting evidence supporting it that was at least in part credited by the court. 2. The trial court's interpretation of the parties' separation agreement was clearly erroneous, and its findin