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Taylor v. Taylor3/3/1992
The opinion of the court was delivered by: GARRETT, Presiding Judge.
Appellee Cherie A. Taylor (Cherie) filed a petition for divorce from Appellant Noble L. Taylor (Noble) in 1988. After the petition was filed, but before the divorce became final, Noble was seriously injured in an automobile accident. Cherie and Noble took no further action on the divorce at that time, and Cherie moved back in with Noble to take care of him. He brought an action for injuries suffered in the automobile accident and obtained an out of court settlement. Cherie was not joined as plaintiff in the action, and there was no claim on her behalf for loss of consortium. On January 31, 1990, Cherie filed another petition for divorce from Noble. The previous divorce petition was still pending, and Cherie dismissed it. She testified it was her understanding that it had already been dismissed because she had told her lawyer after Noble's accident that they were not going through with it. The marriage ended on July 12, 1990, pursuant to a divorce decree of that date.
Prior to the entry of the divorce decree, the trial court ordered Noble to place $50,000.00 of his personal injury settlement proceeds in trust during the pendency of the divorce proceeding. In the divorce decree, Cherie was awarded $20,000.00 of the funds in trust as part of the marital property division. Noble contends the trial court committed error in giving Cherie $20,000.00 of the award, claiming the settlement proceeds are his separate property.
The issue in this appeal is: are the proceeds of a personal injury settlement the separate property of the injured spouse, and therefore not subject to division as marital property in a divorce case?
The Supreme Court has recently addressed the issue of the nature of disability insurance proceeds [Christmas v. Christmas, 787 P.2d 1267 (Okl. 1990)], and workers' compensation benefits [Crocker v. Crocker, 824 P.2d 1117 (Okl. 1991)], of one spouse in a divorce action, and whether the funds represent separate property, or joint funds subject to division. These cases were also cases of first impression in Oklahoma. See also Rowlan v. Rowlan, 817 P.2d 1285 (Okl.App. 1991), wherein this Court considered the issue of a spouse's federal disability pension. In Christmas, the Court used a "replacement approach" to determine the divisibility of disability insurance proceeds in a divorce proceeding. This approach considers the nature of the funds which are being replaced by the disability proceeds. In referring to Christmas, the Crocker Court stated this approach resembled the "analytical" approach used in other jurisdictions. The Supreme Court adopted this approach because both workers' compensation and disability insurance are forms of deferred compensation and are thus treated similarly for property division purposes. 824 P.2d at 1123. The Court stated, at page 1123:
Because our workers' compensation law characterizes awards as money in lieu of wages, and because of our prior treatment of disability awards in Christmas, we adopt the analytical approach. A workers' compensation disability award is marital property only to the extent that it recompenses for the couple's loss of income during the marriage. To the extent that it compensates for loss of post-divorce earnings by the injured party, it is separate property. Because a former spouse has no inherent right to the salary earned by his/her former marriage partner after the marriage is terminated, there is no right to a disability award which is intended to replace future wages.
Oklahoma has not addressed the nature of personal injury awards to injured spous
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