Alaska Supreme Court: spouse's word alone cannot shield inheritance in divorce

A spouse's own word is not enough to keep inherited money out of the marital estate, the property split in a divorce, the Alaska Supreme Court ruled Friday.

The ruling came in the Homer divorce of Scott and Stephanie Dickerson. It reverses Superior Court Judge Bride Siefert, who let the wife reclaim more than $212,000 she inherited from her grandfather and put into the family home. The case now goes back to Homer Superior Court so the couple's property can be divided again.

Alaska law has long presumed that inherited property stays separate unless the owner's own intent and conduct show it was meant to become marital. But once separate money is mixed into marital property, the presumption flips: the law assumes it was given to the marriage, and the spouse claiming otherwise carries the burden of proof.

The court held that "a party's uncorroborated testimony about the party's prior subjective intent or an asserted oral agreement is not sufficient to rebut the presumption." The justices said their earlier decisions were consistent with that rule but "have not described this rule as such."

Justice Borghesan wrote the opinion for a four-justice panel that included Justices Henderson, Pate and Oravec. Chief Justice Susan Carney did not take part.

Stephanie Dickerson used $212,537 from her grandfather's estate toward the down payment on the home, which later sold for $1.45 million. She testified the couple had agreed she could take the money back out when the home was refinanced, and the trial judge found her testimony credible and treated the money as separate property. The Supreme Court did not question that credibility finding but ruled that credible testimony can still fall short, because whether evidence overcomes a legal presumption is a question of law the justices decide for themselves.

Drawing on Pasley v. Pasley, the opinion tells lower courts what to weigh: how specifically a person would be expected to remember the transaction, what paperwork would ordinarily exist, whether the testimony is neutral or self-serving, and how long ago the transaction took place. In this case, nothing was in writing. The court acknowledged that demanding paperwork can unfairly penalize people with less business experience, but noted the wife "is a business owner who could reasonably be expected to document an agreement involving an investment of over $200,000."

The claimed agreement tied the withdrawal to a refinancing. The couple refinanced, and the money stayed in the house, remaining in the home's equity for years while both spouses controlled and improved the property.

The wife cross-appealed. The trial judge had held the entire increase in the home's equity marital, and she argued a share should have been hers. Because the inheritance itself became marital, the justices said, the claim to its growth fails too.

The husband argued the appeal without a lawyer, self-represented in the trial court since December 2021; his appellate attorney moved to withdraw 16 days after the appeal was filed. The wife was represented throughout, by Anchorage attorney Heather Gardner.

The justices upheld the equal division of property, which he had asked to change to 65 percent in his favor. They declined to take up his claim to equity in a neighboring lot sold to his mother-in-law, because he never said what that equity was worth. They also let the child support figure stand. Because he never gave the trial court the income information it asked for, he lost the right to argue the calculation was wrong, leaving only a check for obvious error. They found none: the $29,089 the court used was below the $34,343 on his 2022 tax return.

Each side will pay its own legal fees, with the court finding the wife's losing position still had merit.

The parties' positions appear here only as the opinion describes them. Neither spouse is quoted directly in the court record.

The divorce began in November 2021 and remains active in Homer Superior Court, where custody and support matters have continued. Opinion No. 7832 orders the marital estate recalculated. It does not say what either spouse will receive, and it remains subject to correction before formal publication.