Shelia J. Taylor Wife filed for divorce and entered into a partial settlement agreement with Charles Y. Taylor Husband. The trial court approved the agreement and, at the final hearing, considered only two issues, equitable division with respect to the parties’ pensions and attorney’s fees. The trial court entered a final divorce decree, approving and incorporating the parties’ agreement, making an equitable division award to Wife based upon her and Husband’s pension contributions as employees, and ruling that each party shall be responsible for his or her own attorney’s fees. Wife applied for discretionary review, which we granted pursuant to our Pilot Project in divorce cases. 1. Each party has vested pension benefits which were acquired during the marriage. The evidence showed the amount of contributions to Husband’s retirement account by both him and his employer, as well as the amount of his benefits if he ceased the employment immediately and either began drawing benefits at that time or waited until age 65. With respect to Wife, the evidence showed her own contributions to her retirement account and the amount of benefits if she ceased her employment immediately and began drawing benefits at age 60. The trial court awarded Wife one-half of the difference between her own pension contribution and the greater amount of Husband’s pension contribution. Wife contends that the trial court abused its discretion in failing to classify the employer contributions to the parties’ pension accounts as marital property and equitably to divide the parties’ entire pension benefits.
“The law is well-settled that retirement benefits acquired during the marriage are marital property subject to equitable division. Cits.” Rabek v. Kellum , 279 Ga. 709, 711 620 SE2d 387 2005. See also Courtney v. Courtney , 256 Ga. 97, 99 2 344 SE2d 421 1986. This is true of both vested and unvested benefits. Andrews v. Whitaker , 265 Ga. 76, 77 4 453 SE2d 735 1995. However, the trial court never expressly found otherwise.In a bench trial, the court sits as the finder of fact and, as such, is charged with the responsibility of determining whether and to what extent a particular item is a marital or non-marital asset and then exercising its discretion and dividing the marital property equitable. The final judgment and decree of divorce entered in the case at bar contains the results of that process but does not contain any findings of fact that clarify the rationale used by the trial court to reach its result. Cits. However, a superior court judge is not required to make findings of fact in a nonjury trial unless requested to do so by one of the parties prior to the entry of the written judgment cits., and neither party asked the trial court to make findings of fact. Inasmuch as the issues on appeal depend upon the factual determinations made by the trial court as factfinder and neither party asked the trial court to make factual findings, we are unable to conclude that the trial court’s equitable distribution of marital property was improper as a matter of law or as a matter of fact.Crowder v. Crowder , 281 Ga. 656, 658-659 642 SE2d 97 2007.
