Background
Carolyn and Ronald Eberly were married in October 1990 and separated after roughly 33 years. Wife filed for divorce in October 2022. The parties stipulated to the value and division of most marital assets — including equal division of approximately $3 million in retirement accounts and $11.5 million in other assets — but contested spousal support, the classification of several properties, and a contempt motion. At the time of trial, Wife’s income (salary plus passive income) was found to be $645,165 annually and Husband’s income was $296,499.
The Delaware County Common Pleas Court, Domestic Relations Division, granted the divorce and ordered Wife to pay Husband $5,500 per month in spousal support for thirteen years beginning April 1, 2025, with the court retaining jurisdiction to modify amount, duration, and terms. The court also found Oakwood, LLC — a business interest gifted to Wife by her parents — to be Wife’s separate property, and found Wife’s Chase checking account (x3708) to be marital property subject to equal division after Wife failed to trace the commingled balance to separate funds.
Both parties appealed. Husband challenged the spousal support amount and duration as inadequate, argued Wife should have been held in contempt for canceling insurance on a 2020 Range Rover, and contested the Oakwood, LLC classification. Wife cross-appealed, arguing the support award was effectively indefinite, that income from her separate-property Riehl Legacy Properties was improperly included in the support calculation, and that the Chase checking account should have been treated as separate property.
The Court’s Holding
The Fifth District affirmed the trial court’s judgment in full on all seven assignments of error. On spousal support, the court held the trial court did not abuse its discretion in awarding $5,500 per month for thirteen years — a term that carries Husband to approximately age 70 — after properly weighing all fourteen statutory factors under R.C. 3105.18(C)(1). The court rejected Husband’s reliance on Hutta v. Hutta for the proposition that indefinite support or income equalization was required, distinguishing Hutta on the ground that Husband here has substantial independent income and received over $5 million in assets, with no gap in support before retirement-age resources become available.
On the property issues, the court upheld Oakwood, LLC as Wife’s separate property, finding competent, credible evidence supported the trial court’s conclusion that Husband’s involvement in the LLC’s operations did not demonstrably increase the entity’s value or income. As to the Chase checking account, the court affirmed its classification as marital property because Wife commingled marital and separate funds in the account and then used the combined balance to pay both marital and personal expenses, making the remaining balance untraceable to any identifiable separate-property source. The court also agreed that R.C. 3105.18(C)(1)(a) expressly requires courts to consider income from all sources — including distributions from separate property — when calculating spousal support, and found no abuse of discretion in counting Wife’s Riehl Legacy Properties distributions as income given evidence that quarterly distributions had already begun and were expected to continue.
The court overruled Husband’s contempt assignment, agreeing with the trial court that the agreed temporary order’s paragraph governing individual expenses was designed to prohibit use of marital funds for personal expenses — not to impose a freestanding obligation to maintain insurance on the Range Rover.
Key Takeaways
- A trial court is not required to order indefinite spousal support or equalize incomes simply because a marriage was long-term; the statutory factors under R.C. 3105.18(C)(1) must be weighed as a whole, and a definite term is appropriate where the recipient has substantial income and receives a large asset division.
- Income from a spouse’s separate property — including passive distributions from an inherited entity — is expressly includable as income for spousal support purposes under R.C. 3105.18(C)(1)(a), regardless of whether that property is exempt from division under R.C. 3105.171.
- A party claiming separate-property status for a commingled account must trace not only which deposits were separate, but also demonstrate that the funds remaining in the account are attributable to those separate deposits rather than to commingled marital funds used for marital expenses; failure to do so renders the balance marital property.
- A trial court’s retention of jurisdiction to modify spousal support does not render the award indefinite, and it provides the paying spouse a procedural mechanism to seek relief upon changed circumstances such as the recipient’s cohabitation or increased earnings.
Why It Matters
This decision reinforces the broad discretion Ohio trial courts retain in crafting spousal support awards after long marriages, making clear that neither income equalization nor indefinite duration is mandated as a matter of law — even where income disparities are significant. For practitioners, the opinion highlights the importance of building a complete evidentiary record: Husband’s inability to quantify the value his contributions added to Oakwood, LLC was fatal to his marital-property claim, and Wife’s failure to trace the ultimate disposition of commingled funds, not merely identify their origin, doomed her effort to preserve the Chase account as separate property.
The court’s confirmation that separate-property income streams count in full toward the spousal-support calculation is a practical reminder that characterizing property as separate for division purposes does not insulate the income it generates from the support analysis — an important distinction for high-net-worth divorces where passive income from inherited or pre-marital assets is substantial.