## Facts

- Cherry Gilbert and Dawud A. Muhammad cohabited from December 1994 to August 1996, married in August 1996, separated April 3, 2001, and their marriage was dissolved April 5, 2002.
- Muhammad worked as a King County deputy sheriff; Gilbert worked for Albertson’s and Pierce County Transit.
- After an April 3, 2001 incident involving allegations that Muhammad threatened Gilbert and her sister with a weapon, Muhammad was arrested and charged with domestic-violence-related offenses; he denied the allegations.
- On November 16, 2001, Gilbert obtained a domestic-violence protection order that barred Muhammad from possessing a firearm; as a result, he could not continue working as a deputy sheriff and lost his job.
- In the dissolution, the trial court distributed significant marital debt and awarded each party his or her own pension without division (Muhammad’s approximately $38,400; Gilbert’s approximately $7,625).
- The trial court declined to divide approximately $8,200 in pension accrual attributed to the parties’ cohabitation period, describing it as minimal.
- The trial court assigned Gilbert responsibility for one-half of the debt on the family home.
- The trial judge explicitly tied the pension and debt decisions to Gilbert’s obtaining the protection order and stated she should have anticipated that it would cause Muhammad to lose his employment.

## Issues

1. Whether the trial court abused its discretion under RCW 26.09.080 by considering marital misconduct when it allocated property and debt.
2. Whether penalizing a spouse in property distribution for obtaining a domestic-violence protection order constitutes improper consideration of marital fault, even if the order had economic consequences.

## Decision

- The Washington Supreme Court reversed the Court of Appeals and vacated the trial court’s property and debt distribution.
- The court held the dissolution judge improperly considered marital fault by disfavoring Gilbert for obtaining a protection order and for Muhammad’s resulting job loss.
- The court remanded for a new trial limited to property division and ordered reassignment to a different superior court judge.

## Legal Principles

- RCW 26.09.080 requires equitable distribution of property and liabilities “without regard to marital misconduct.”
- A trial court may consider the parties’ present economic circumstances, including unemployment, but may not assign moral blame to a spouse for those circumstances and use that blame to adjust the distribution.
- A property distribution is reversed for manifest abuse of discretion when the court relies on an improper factor, including marital fault.
- Lawful recourse to a domestic-violence protection order cannot be treated as “misconduct” supporting financial punishment in dissolution proceedings.

## Conclusion

The court held that a dissolution judge may consider the financial reality of a spouse’s unemployment, but may not penalize the other spouse for obtaining a domestic-violence protection order; because the property division was expressly driven by such fault-based reasoning, the case was remanded for a new property-division trial before a different judge.


In re Marriage of Muhammad, 153 Wash. 2d 795, 108 P.3d 779 (Wash. 2005)