Netter v. Netter

Citations

• 235 Conn. App. 774

Syllabus

The defendant appealed from the trial court's judgment dissolving his mar- riage to the plaintiff and granting certain other relief. He claimed, inter alia, that the court improperly treated certain trust assets as part of the marital estate subject to distribution pursuant to statute (§ 46b-81). Held: The trial court's finding that a spendthrift trust created by the defendant's father prior to the parties' marriage was part of the marital estate and subject to distribution pursuant to § 46b-81 was clearly erroneous, as the trust agreement provided that all trust distributions to the defendant had to be approved by a disinterested trustee, and, accordingly, the defendant had no presently enforceable right to receive his interest in the trust and the court should not have considered it an asset of the marital estate that it was authorized to divide pursuant to § 46b-81. The trial court properly determined that three trusts created by the defendant during the parties' marriage and funded with marital assets constituted divisible marital property, as, although the trusts were created as self-settled spendthrift trusts under South Dakota law, at the time the trusts were created Connecticut did not recognize the validity of self-settled trusts and, even if the trusts had satisfied the requirements of the Connecticut Qualified Dispositions in Trust Act (§ 45a-487j et seq.), enacted in 2019, they would nonetheless be void as a matter of public policy by virtue of the fact that sustaining them and excluding their assets from distribution would unfairly prejudice the plaintiff. This court, having concluded that the trial court improperly treated the assets from one of the trusts as marital property, determined that, on remand, the entirety of the mosaic of financial orders, excluding the personal property distribution order, must be refashioned, as it was uncertain whether the trial court's other financial orders would remain intact after reconsidering the property distribut