This appeal involves a contempt order arising from a 2007 divorce decree. The decree required Robert Malcolm Darroch to remove Donna Overholt Willis’s name from the mortgage on the marital residence within 30 days of remarrying. Darroch remarried on August 10, 2008, but he did not remove Willis’s name from the mortgage. On March 6, 2009, the trial court held Darroch in contempt of court and ordered him to purge the contempt either by completing a pending refinancing or by listing the marital residence for sale and accepting any cash offer for at least 95 of the list price. We granted Darroch’s application for discretionary appeal under the Pilot Project for divorce cases. We affirm the trial court’s finding that Darroch was willfully in contempt of the divorce decree. We conclude, however, that the trial court’s requirement that Darroch sell the house if he did not refinance it constituted an improper modification of the decree’s property division awarding ownership of the house to Darroch. Accordingly, although the trial court’s alternatives for enforcing the divorce decree may prove more onerous to Darroch than the contempt remedy the trial court crafted, we must reverse the court’s contempt judgment to the extent that it requires the sale of the marital residence.
1.Willis and Darroch were married on June 26, 1993. The couple separated in May 2007, and on August 23, 2007, they entered into a marital dissolution agreement MDA that was incorporated into a September 24, 2007 divorce decree. Among the assets that were divided in the MDA, Paragraph 3 B provided that Darroch would have “exclusive ownership” of the marital residence subject to an existing mortgage on which Darroch and Willis were joint obligors. Darroch agreed to assume responsibility for the mortgage and to remove Willis as a co-obligor within 30 days of the earlier of either: 1 his remarriage or cohabitation with anyone other than a relative; or 2 the point at which he was able to refinance the mortgage at a rate equal to or less than the current rate.1 Paragraph 7 of the MDA required the parties to “execute all documents, perform all acts and do all things necessary . . . to effectuate any of the provisions and conditions set forth in this Agreement.”
