Ingles v. Ingles

Citations

• 216 Conn. App. 782

Syllabus

The defendant appealed to this court from the judgment of the trial court dissolving her marriage to the plaintiff and making certain financial orders and denying her motion for contempt. Before trial, the parties had entered into a stipulation in which the plaintiff agreed to make mortgage payments on the marital home. The trial court denied the defendant's subsequent motion for contempt, in which she alleged that the plaintiff failed to pay past due mortgage payments, on the ground that his failure to pay the mortgage was not wilful. Each party was employed at the time of trial and had a pension associated with that employment. The parties were unable to agree on a professional evalua- tor to value the pensions and, at trial, neither party presented testimony from an actuary as to the value of the pensions. The court awarded the defendant the marital home, ordered that the plaintiff transfer 75 percent of his 457 (b) retirement plan to the defendant, and ordered the plaintiff to pay the defendant periodic alimony in the amount of $250 per week for two years, to support the defendant while she refinanced the mort- gage on the marital home. The court ordered that each party would retain sole ownership of his or her pension. Held: 1. The trial court correctly concluded that the plaintiff was not in contempt for failing to comply with a pendente lite order: the court did not find that the plaintiff was in wilful noncompliance of its order that he make certain mortgage payments, which the defendant, as the party seeking the order of contempt, had the burden to prove by clear and convincing evidence; in the present case, even though the court found that the plaintiff was late in making certain mortgage payments, it did not find that the plaintiff failed to make his best effort to make timely payments in violation of its order or that any such violation was wilful, and, because the court determined that the defendant failed to establish a prima facie case of contempt, th