Marshall v. Marshall

Citations

• 200 Conn. App. 688

Syllabus

The defendant, whose marriage to the plaintiff previously had been dis- solved, appealed to this court from the judgment of the trial court, claiming, inter alia, that the trial court erred when it went beyond the scope of this court's remand order in a prior appeal involving the parties when construing their separation agreement, which had been incorpo- rated into the dissolution judgment, and calculating the alimony arrear- age the plaintiff owed to the defendant. In her prior appeal to this court from the judgment dissolving her marriage, the defendant claimed that the dissolution court erred in calculating the plaintiff's alimony obliga- tion on the basis of his W-2 income without considering the K-1 distribu- tions to him from A Co., of which he was an owner. This court concluded that the separation agreement was ambiguous as to whether the K-1 distributions from A Co. were to be included in the plaintiff's pre-tax income from employment and, if so, to what extent. This court further concluded that the dissolution court had improperly granted the plain- tiff's motion to modify alimony. In its rescript, this court thus reversed the dissolution court's granting of the plaintiff's motion to modify ali- mony and the court's calculation of his alimony arrearage, affirmed the judgment in all other respects and remanded the case to the trial court to determine the parties' intent and to determine the plaintiff's alimony arrearage accordingly. On remand, the trial court first determined that the intent of the parties was that some K-1 distributions to the plaintiff from A Co. should be included in the plaintiff's pre-tax income. The court then found that the parties had adopted the reasonable compensation calculation to establish the plaintiff's pre-tax income for alimony pur- poses and modified his alimony obligation for the nearly four years prior to the plaintiff's motion to modify alimony. Held: 1. The trial court acted within the scope of this court's remand order