Quintana v. Ordono

Mr. Quintana was an employee of Okeelanta Sugar Refinery, Inc. (Okeelanta), a Florida company. Mr. Quintana had the opportunity to purchase shares in Okeelanta stock, and he purchased 5,000 shares in 1952 and again in 1958. The stock shares were considered moveable property. In 1961, Okeelanta stock had a ten-for-one split, and, as a result, Mr. Quintana owned 100,000 shares. Mr. Quintana sold his shares of Okeelanta stock for a promissory note in the amount of $810,000, which he held at the time of his death. Mr. Quintana's children from a previous marriage (plaintiffs) brought an action to determine that the promissory note was an asset of the estate and was not community property. Carmen Quintana (defendant), the widow of Mr. Quintana, had lived with her husband in Cuba from their marriage in 1936 until they moved to Florida in 1960, where they remained until her husband's death in 1963. Mr. Quintana worked in Florida but continued to be domiciled in and regularly visited Cuba until he and his wife together moved to Florida. Cuba had a community-property domestic-relations legal scheme that held that all property acquired during the marriage was community property. The trial court ruled that the promissory note was the separate property of Mr. Quintana and that Mrs. Quintana had no rights other than her rights as an intestate spouse under Florida probate law. Mrs. Quintana appealed the trial court's decision.