Walton v. Walton

Citations

• 227 Conn. App. 251

Syllabus

The defendant appealed to this court from the judgment of the trial court dissolving her marriage to the plaintiff and finding her in contempt for various violations of the court's automatic orders and pendente lite orders. During the pendency of the underlying action, the defendant executed a separation agreement with her employer and, approximately two weeks later, the parties signed a pendente lite agreement that pro- vided, inter alia, that the defendant would pay the first mortgage on the marital residence and automobile insurance premiums. The defendant subsequently withdrew almost $80,000 from her retirement accounts, which was not fully accounted for at the time of trial, and received more than $70,000 from her parents, which she used to pay off her personal credit card debt. The defendant also removed the plaintiff as an insured from the parties' automobile insurance policies and an umbrella policy covering the parties' vehicles and the marital residence, which were in place at the time the dissolution action was commenced. The defendant stopped making the monthly mortgage payments, and she sought and obtained a deferral of the mortgage payments in the amount of $87,961.45 without the written consent of the plaintiff or an order of the court. Two days before the final day of trial, the trial court denied the defendant's request for production of an appraisal of the marital residence completed by an independent appraiser, C, retained by the plaintiff. Held: 1. The defendant could not prevail on her claim that the trial court improperly granted the plaintiff's motion for contempt alleging that the defendant violated the automatic orders when she removed the plaintiff as an insured under the parties' insurance policies: this court rejected the defendant's argument that the automatic orders did not clearly and unambiguously pertain to the umbrella policy, as the umbrella policy was, in substance, a policy that covered the parties' automobiles and marital reside