## Facts

- Esther and Robert Buol married in 1943 and separated in 1977.
- Robert stopped working around 1970, in part due to alcoholism, and began receiving Social Security disability benefits in 1973.
- Esther worked outside the home for many years and, with Robert’s knowledge and consent, kept her earnings in a separate bank account.
- In 1963, Esther purchased a house in San Rafael using her earnings; title was taken in joint tenancy on a realtor’s advice.
- Esther made all mortgage, tax, insurance, and maintenance payments from her separate account; Robert contributed nothing.
- Esther testified the parties had an understanding that her earnings and the house were hers; multiple witnesses corroborated Robert’s repeated statements that the house belonged to Esther.
- The trial court found an enforceable oral agreement that Esther’s earnings and the house were her separate property and awarded the house to Esther.
- While Robert’s appeal was pending, the Legislature enacted Civil Code § 4800.1 (effective Jan. 1, 1984), creating a presumption that jointly titled marital property is community property and limiting rebuttal to a written agreement or specified documentary title evidence; no such writing existed here.

## Issues

1. Whether Civil Code § 4800.1 may be applied retroactively to dissolution cases already tried and decided under prior law but not yet final on appeal, thereby eliminating an adjudicated separate-property interest absent a writing.
2. Whether such retroactive application would violate due process under article I, section 7 of the California Constitution by impairing vested property rights.

## Decision

- The California Supreme Court affirmed the trial court’s judgment awarding the house to Esther as her separate property.
- The court held Civil Code § 4800.1 could not constitutionally be applied retroactively to cases pending on its effective date when retroactivity would destroy a spouse’s vested property right recognized by a trial court judgment.
- The court disapproved contrary intermediate appellate decisions that had applied § 4800.1 retroactively in similar circumstances.

## Legal Principles

- A statute may not be applied retroactively if doing so deprives a person of a vested right without due process of law under the California Constitution.
- A separate-property interest judicially recognized under the law governing at the time of trial constitutes a vested property right that cannot be extinguished by later legislation merely because the judgment is not yet final on appeal.
- Retroactivity is not justified where it would override a trial court’s supported factual findings and serve only evidentiary convenience rather than fairness or accuracy in an already-tried case.
- Stability and finality of judgments weigh against applying new property characterization rules to cases already adjudicated under prior law.

## Conclusion

The court held that Civil Code § 4800.1’s writing requirement for rebutting the joint-title community-property presumption could not be applied retroactively to undo a trial court’s adjudication that property was a spouse’s separate property, because retroactive application would impair vested property rights without due process.


In re Marriage of Buol, 705 P.2d 354 (Cal. 1985)