Ostapowicz v. Wisniewski

Citations

• 210 Conn. App. 401

Syllabus

The plaintiff appealed from the judgment of the trial court dissolving her marriage to the defendant. She claimed that the court lacked subject matter jurisdiction to enforce the parties' premarital agreement, erred in finding that certain property constituted the defendant's separate property under that agreement and abused its discretion in assigning to her the debt on the parties' home equity line of credit. Held: 1. The plaintiff could not prevail on her claim that the trial court lacked subject matter jurisdiction to enforce the parties' premarital agreement: although the defendant did not comply with the specific pleading require- ments of the rule of practice (§ 25-2A), as he did not file a demand for enforcement of the agreement in his prayer for relief, the court, noting that § 25-2A permits the court to exercise its discretion with respect to the time to demand enforcement of an agreement, found that the defendant's filing of a notice containing the agreement constituted a demand for the enforcement of the agreement; moreover, the court had statutory (§ 46b-1) jurisdiction over the dissolution of the parties' marriage, including the premarital agreement, and the rules of practice do not implicate a court's subject matter jurisdiction. 2. The trial court did not abuse its discretion in classifying and assigning the defendant's separate property interests pursuant to the parties' pre- marital agreement: the plaintiff did not challenge the court's findings that the defendant had complied with the provisions of the agreement related to record keeping and that the plaintiff had removed certain of the defendant's financial records from the marital home, making it diffi- cult for the defendant to trace his property interests in detail; moreover, the court credited the testimony of witnesses that the defendant's family business was an informal venture, and it made detailed findings concern- ing the value of the family business assets at the time of the parties' ma