Elizabeth Ann Morrow Granoff v. Andrew Scott Granoff

This action arose over the proposed post-divorce sale of improved real property in which both parties held an ownership interest pursuant to the terms of their marital dissolution agreement, entered by the trial court with the parties’ divorce judgment in May 2006. The real property at issue consisted of a luxury estate situated on approximately twenty-six acres of lakeside property in White Pine, Tennessee. Following the parties’ filing of competing motions for contempt, respectively alleging each party’s lack of cooperation in efforts to sell the marital residence, the parties announced an agreement in December 2008 that the wife would “assume the right to list, market, show and sell” the marital residence while the husband was allowed to continue living there. This agreement was ultimately memorialized by the trial court in an order entered September 6, 2011. Upon negotiating an offer to purchase the marital residence for $925,000.00 in August 2013, the wife filed a motion to approve the sale at that price. Following a bench hearing, at which the husband opposed the sale and questioned Wife’s authority to enter into the purchase and sale contract, the trial court granted the wife’s motion and approved the sale of the marital residence for the amount of $925,000.00. The court also granted Wife authority to convey the real property upon her signature alone, ruling that Wife had acted in accordance with the authority awarded her in the previous order. The husband appeals. Discerning no reversible error, we affirm.