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In re Letendre12/31/2002
Salem Family Division
Argued: October 9, 2002
The petitioner, Peter Letendre, appeals the divorce decree issued by the Salem Family Division (Reardon, J.) awarding the respondent, Linda Letendre, alimony, health insurance coverage and an unequal interest in the marital estate. We affirm.
The parties were married in 1982. The respondent did not graduate from high school, and although she worked periodically outside the home during the marriage, she devoted most of her time to maintaining the parties' household and caring for their two children. Throughout the marriage, the petitioner worked for Letendre Moore & O'Connell, Inc. (LMO), of which he is president and a one-third owner.
When LMO was formed in 1978, each of the three owners received fifty shares of stock in the corporation. In 1984, the LMO shareholders adopted a stock redemption agreement to provide a buyout mechanism in the event that a shareholder died or sought to sell his stock. The agreement contains no restrictions on selling shares to a third party. The shareholders set the initial stock redemption price at $4,000 per share, and, beginning in 1992, they met annually to determine current share valuation. In 2000, they set the stock redemption price at $6,785.40 per share.
LMO is debt-free and rents office space from LMO Trust, in which the petitioner is also a one-third owner. The LMO Trust distributes its earnings annually to the three LMO shareholders. In addition to his regular salary and the annual distribution from the LMO Trust, the petitioner receives corporate contributions towards a profit-sharing plan, an annual bonus, and health and life insurance benefits. In 1999, the petitioner realized $134,878 in compensation and earnings.
During the marriage, the respondent was a party to a gender discrimination lawsuit against a Massachusetts country club, to which the parties belonged. In October 1999, she was awarded a verdict of $278,600 against the club. To date, the respondent has not received any payment, and the verdict is on appeal in Massachusetts.
In November 1999, the parties separated and the petitioner filed for divorce on grounds of irreconcilable differences. The respondent filed a cross-petition alleging fault. She also served interrogatories upon the petitioner requesting information about his anticipated expert witnesses, to which the petitioner responded "Unknown at present." In March 2000, the trial court conducted a pre-trial conference and ordered all discovery to be completed by August 15. In June, the respondent served a "Further Request for the Production of Documents to the Petitioner," which contained a request for documents to be submitted by the petitioner's experts, including business appraisals and valuations. The petitioner failed to respond, and the respondent filed a motion in limine seeking to preclude the petitioner from introducing at trial any appraisals, reports or other expert testimony not properly disclosed pursuant to Superior Court Rule 35(f) or by the August 15 deadline. The court conducted a hearing and granted the motion. After a three-day final hearing in September 2000, the trial court granted a divorce on fault grounds, finding that the petitioner's verbal misconduct towards the respondent during their seventeen-year marriage caused her serious injury .
At the time of the hearing, the petitioner was fifty-four years of age and the respondent was forty-eight. They owned two houses unencumbered by any mortgage. Their primary residence had an appraised value between $220,000 and $280,000, and their rental property in Rhode Island was appraised between $125,000 and $135,000. In addition, they h
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