One spouse might get a large discretionary bonus each year, based in part on good work done during the community property period. Other spouse gets what?

Miguel Angel Loya had a job in which he got a sizeable bonus every Spring. He and his wife Leticia B. Loya were getting a divorce and executed a mediated settlement agreement dividing their property. They did this shortly before he got one of his bonuses.When it came, Miguel wanted it, and Leticia said that it wasn't in the property division. The trial court agreed with Miguel, saying, among other things, that it had already been divided in his favor as his future income.
Leticia appealed to the 14th Court of Appeals where Justice Sharon McCally (one of my very favorite classmates in law school)

a majority opinion for herself and for Justice William J. Boyce

 favoring her. Chief Justice Ms. Kem Thompson Frost 

dissented, agreeing with the husband. The husband took up the case to the Supreme Court of the State of Texas, where a unanimous court-- their opinion written  by Justice Debra Lehrmann

 found for the husband.

The lesson-- write those MSAs very carefully. Texas state appeals justices will say that a thing is in MSA rather than develops rules that open up their finality.

Houston's Fourteenth Court of Appeals Overturns Improper Strikes of African Americans

Robert Nathaniel Jones appealed his felony conviction for possessing a controlled substance. He said that the State peremptorily struck an African-American veniremember in violation of Batson v. Kentucky, 476 U.S. 79 (1986). He claimed that the State’s explanation for striking one African-American veniremember applied identically to three non-African-American veniremembers who ultimately served on the jury.

The State said that, after striking less favorable veniremembers, it used its final strikes against veniremembers who rated law enforcement in their community a “seven” on a scale of one to ten. It said its strategy was to “str[ike] everybody who was a six [on law enforcement] and then everyone who was a seven, up until [it] got to the point of . . . [veniremember number] 26 or 27,” where it “ran out of strikes”; it “took seven or lower and just moved up the scale from [veniremember number] one.”

The trial court should not have accepted this explanation because it is against the record. When the State struck veniremember number twenty-four, an African American, it skipped over two non-African-American veniremembers with lower numbers who also gave law enforcement a score of seven. Additionally, the State’s strikes revealed disparate treatment of African-American veniremembers. So Justice J. Brett Busby, writing for a panel including Chief Justice Kem Thompson Frost and Justice Marc W. Brown reversed and remanded the case for retrial.

Trial lawyers, Batson error is very rarely properly preserved, but that’s old news for readers of this blog.

Robert Nathaniel Jones v. State of Texas, ___ S.W.3d ___, No. 14-12-00515-CR (Tex. App.-- Houston [14th Dist.] ) Oct. 1, 2012) (no pet. h.)