Cunningham v. Cunningham

Citations

• 204 Conn. App. 366

Syllabus

The plaintiff, whose marriage to the defendant previously had been dis- solved, appealed to this court from the decision of the trial court granting the defendant's motion for a domestic relations order relating to distribu- tions from his pension plan. In the trial court's memorandum of decision dissolving the parties' marriage, the court ordered that the defendant's pension benefit held with his employer, D Co., be divided with the plaintiff. The defendant subsequently filed a motion seeking the entry of a domestic relations order with regard to the pension benefit, attached to which was a proposed order and a schedule, the terms of which were agreed to by the parties, setting forth the plaintiff's share of the defendant's pension income as of the date of dissolution. The court subsequently entered a domestic relations order that incorporated the language of the defendant's proposed order, and the plaintiff's appeal followed. Held: 1. The plaintiff's claim that the trial court improperly modified the property distribution set forth in the dissolution judgment by requiring her to assign a portion of the joint survivor annuity to a third party was unavail- ing: the court's order effectuated the dissolution judgment by ensuring that any survivor benefit that the plaintiff received is based on the value of the pension benefit as of the time that the dissolution judgment was rendered, which value was the basis of the parties' calculation of the plaintiff's annual pension benefit; thus, the order did not impermissibly modify the judgment, but merely protected its integrity and ensured that the plaintiff did not receive an unintended windfall. 2. The plaintiff could not prevail on her claim that the court's postjudgment order constituted an impermissible modification of the dissolution judg- ment because the order required the plaintiff to share in the cost of the joint survivor annuity election: in the dissolution judgment, the court ordered the defendant to elect a 50