In re Marriage of Estes
Court of Appeals of Washington
929 P.2d 500 (1997)
Yong Estes (plaintiff), a part-time bank teller, and Ronald Estes (defendant), a successful attorney, divorced after a 10-year, childless marriage. At separation, Ronald had five or more pending personal-injury cases on contingency fee, meaning his pay depended on winning a percentage of any client recovery. The trial court assigned those cases no value and awarded them to Ronald as his separate property. Yong's motion for reconsideration was denied and she appealed. Less than two months after the divorce decree, Ronald settled one of those cases and collected a $178,640.72 contingency fee; Yong then moved to vacate the decree based on newly discovered evidence that Ronald had misrepresented the case's value, but that motion was also denied.
Whether, although a contingency fee is difficult to value, the proceeds of a contract obtained during the marriage in the course of the community's business may be awarded to both spouses and divided between them once received.