## Facts

- Stephen Bonina (a building contractor) and Jane A. Sheppard cohabited for about sixteen years in a Massachusetts home titled solely in Sheppard’s name.
- In 1993, Sheppard purchased a vacant, deteriorated house and became the sole mortgagor; Bonina and Sheppard moved in later that year, and Bonina also used part of the property for his business.
- During cohabitation, Bonina paid roughly one-half of the mortgage, taxes, and living expenses; the trial court treated those payments as compensation for his occupancy and excluded them from restitution.
- Separately, Bonina made substantial out-of-pocket expenditures for permanent improvements, repairs, and maintenance, including additions and major upgrades (e.g., furnace, windows, basement work).
- Bonina documented $156,913.07 in expenditures for materials and fixtures over the relationship; he did not seek a separate award for the value of his labor.
- The relationship ended, and Bonina moved out in February 2009.
- The trial judge found Bonina’s expenditures were not gifts and were made with an expectation of sharing in the benefit of the improved property.
- Neither party presented reliable evidence quantifying how much the improvements increased the home’s market value.

## Issues

1. Whether Sheppard was unjustly enriched by Bonina’s substantial, uncompensated, non-gift contributions to improve and maintain Sheppard’s solely owned home during their nonmarital cohabitation.
2. Whether restitution could be measured by Bonina’s documented costs of improvements rather than by the increase in the home’s market value attributable to those improvements, given the evidentiary record.

## Decision

- The Massachusetts Appeals Court affirmed the Superior Court’s judgment awarding Bonina $156,913.07 in restitution.
- The court held the trial judge did not err in finding unjust enrichment based on Bonina’s substantial, non-gift expenditures that conferred a lasting benefit on Sheppard’s property.
- The court held it was not an abuse of discretion to use cost-based restitution where neither party provided reliable evidence of market value increase and Bonina provided credible documentation of expenditures.
- The award was limited to documented out-of-pocket improvement costs and excluded mortgage and ordinary living expenses.

## Legal Principles

- Unjust enrichment requires proof that the defendant received a benefit at the plaintiff’s expense under circumstances making it inequitable to retain the benefit without payment.
- Restitution in cohabitation contexts may be available for substantial, non-gratuitous improvements to property titled in the other partner’s name, without creating a marital property-sharing regime.
- Restitution is generally keyed to the value of the defendant’s enrichment, but trial courts have equitable discretion to approximate that enrichment when direct valuation is impractical.
- A plaintiff’s documented improvement costs may serve as a reasonable proxy for the defendant’s benefit where market-value increase evidence is unreliable or absent and the costs directly relate to the benefit conferred.
- Payments for occupancy-related expenses (e.g., mortgage and household costs) may be treated as compensated by the payer’s use of the property and therefore excluded from restitution.

## Conclusion

The court affirmed a restitution award to prevent unjust enrichment where an unmarried cohabitant made substantial, non-gift, out-of-pocket improvements to the other partner’s solely titled home, and it approved measuring restitution by documented costs when no reliable evidence showed the property’s value increase from the improvements.


Bonina v. Sheppard, 91 Mass. App. Ct. 622, 78 N.E.3d 128 (2017)