Court Rulings

Movant, defendant in a divorce case, seeks accelerated review of the denial of his motion for recusal. He claims a lack of impartiality on the part of the chancellor presiding over the divorce case due to her knowledge of unrelated litigation in which the movant was a party. He contends that the chancellor revealed her lack of impartiality in making adverse credibility determinations against movant, determining movant violated a statutory injunction, and ignoring prior orders and agreements of the parties in making factual findings. Movant also complains of the manner in which the chancellor conducted an emergency hearing, alleging that the chancellor "lacked patience and cooperation with the litigants on th[at] day." After a de novo review, we affirm the denial of the motion for recusal.

This appeal arose from post-divorce litigation concerning the trial court's distribution of marital assets, specifically the distribution of the marital portion of the husband's federal government pension to the wife. In its divorce decree entered on August 10, 2004, the trial court awarded to the wife "1/2 of [the husband's] Administrative Law Judge Government Pension through the date of this Final Decree." Upon the husband's appeal, this Court affirmed the trial court's judgment in all respects, including the trial court's award to the wife of one-half of the marital portion of the husband's pension. Dowden v. Feibus, No. E2004-02751-COA-R3-CV, 2006 WL 140404 (Tenn. Ct. App. Jan. 18, 2006) ("Dowden I"). The husband sought no further judicial review at that time. Following his retirement from federal employment on May 1, 2017, the husband received correspondence concerning the calculation of the wife's portion of his pension from the federal government's Office of Personnel Management ("OPM"). On August 2, 2018, the husband filed a "Motion for Clarification and/or Relief from Judgment" contending, inter alia, that OPM miscalculated the portion of his pension that would be diverted to the wife because the trial court's final decree was "too vague" and did not "provide sufficient guidance to OPM to allow them to correctly compute" the wife's interest in the pension. On December 6, 2018, the trial court entered an order finding that there was "no lack of clarity" in its final decree and denying the husband's motion. The husband has appealed. Having determined that the trial court did not err in denying the husband's motion, we affirm the judgment of the trial court and remand to the trial court for enforcement of the judgment. We decline to award attorney's fees on appeal to the wife.

The trial court erred in awarding the appellee $1,200 for one month of unpaid rent. The appellants' payment obligation to the appellee under a land contract terminated on June 30, 2018, when the parties signed a written land contract cancellation and release of their land contract. Thereafter, the appellants remained in the appellee's residence for two full months as month-to-month tenants. The record contains two $1,200 cancelled checks from the appellants corresponding to those two months. Therefore, the record does not support the trial court's determination that the appellants owed the appellee another $1,200. The record also contains a minor arithmetic error in the amount of the trial court's judgment, which we correct. Judgment against the appellants and in favor of the appellee modified from $2,018.57 plus interest and costs to $821.21 plus interest and costs. As so modified, the trial court's judgment is affirmed.