Washington man loses father's ranch over financial abuse; court upholds $166,698 divorce judgment

Calvin Evans Jr. expected to inherit his father’s Washington ranch, a property that had also become central to his divorce from Deborah Evans, now Deborah Bunney. During the couple’s 2011 dissolution, a court awarded Bunney the full $174,000 the marital community had invested in improvements to the ranch, based on the expectation that Evans would receive the property from his father.

But a separate probate dispute later found that Evans had financially abused his father, leaving him with nothing from the estate and sending the ranch to Evans’s four adult children. Fourteen years after the divorce judgments were entered, Evans asked a court to undo them because the anticipated inheritance never arrived. On November 2, 2026, the Washington Court of Appeals, Division One, refused.

It upheld two divorce judgments totalling $166,698.50 against Evans, along with a 2021 order extending them, concluding that his challenge came too late and that the loss of the inheritance was not an extraordinary circumstance justifying relief, as per Justia U.S. Law.