KAUGER, J.:

¶ 1 The only issue presented on appeal is whether the trial court erred in its valuation of the marital business. We reverse and remand to the trial court for a valuation of the parties' marital business which includes any loss in its value due to husband's competing business. Such a determination must include its value as of the date that the husband purchased a share of the business, as well as any offset to the valuation of husband's share of the business because he received money from the business during the pendency of the divorce.

FACTS

¶ 2 The appellant, Lori Colclasure Dean (wife), was, from January 1, 1999, until January 1, 2004, the sole owner and operator of Arrow Hardwood Floors, LLC, (Arrow)1 Arrow was an Oklahoma Limited Liability Company under the Articles of Organization filed with the Oklahoma Secretary of State on April 2, 1998. On January 1, 2004, Dean and appellee Kent Colclasure (husband), executed a document entitled Unit Purchase Agreement for Dean's sale of forty-nine percent (49%) of Arrow Hardwood Floors to her then fiancée, Colclasure. The purchase price under the agreement was five-thousand dollars ($5,000).2 No valuation of the company was made at the time of the Unit Purchase Agreement. However, Colclasure's expert indicated that the Gross Receipts for the calendar year 2003, were $635,549 and that the Gross Profits totaled $126,431.3

¶ 3 The parties were married on October 1, 2004. On December 19, 2006, they executed a document entitled Operating Agreement for Arrow Hardwood Floors, LLC. The agreement was presented to them by an accountant and business consultant who worked for Arrow and was a friend of the husband.4 The template for the document was prepared by a lawyer and finalized by the accountant.5 The wife was described in the Agreement as the manager of Arrow and she signed the document as such. The husband and wife both signed as members. The Certificate of Agreed Value contained in the agreement was blank, as was the addendum setting forth their initial capital contributions and the percentages of ownership. The agreement contained two pertinent clauses which should be noted in their entirety, clause 6.08,6 concerning outside activities of members and clause 12.01,7 disqualification of a member.

¶ 4 The wife and husband each worked at Arrow. The husband worked as the sales representative and the wife worked as the manager/bookkeeper. The petition for divorce was filed by the wife on December 28, 2009, and included an application for a temporary order. An agreed temporary order was filed on February 9, 2010. The agreement provided that the wife was to continue as the accountant, although the Agreement does not describe her as such, and that the husband was to work for the company as the sales representative. The parties were prohibited from incurring any corporate indebtedness without written permission from the other party or order of the court. The order provided for monthly distributions to be made to both parties.

¶ 5 By April of 2010, the relationship between the parties had deteriorated further. On or about April 1, 2010, at the Arrow premises, during a dispute over husband's charges of entertainment and other purchases to the company accounts, the husband shoved the wife, causing her to fall. As a result of the fall, the wife was treated for contusions and bruising to her tailbone and she filed for a victim's protective order. She terminated the husband from his role as the company's sales representative on April 5, 2010.

¶ 6 The husband started his own flooring company in direct competition with Arrow and, pursuant to the agreed temporary order, used the Arrow showroom as his office. The wife alleged that the husband used Arrow order books, samples, mobile telephones, and transport in this competing business. She also alleged that he stole Arrow's customers and undercut Arrow on bids. On June 30, 2010, the trial court issued a minute order setting forth the parties' agreed use of the Arrow showroom. The order provided that the husband was not to use the warehouse; the telephone; say he was with Arrow or access Arrow's current bids; neither husband nor wife was to interfere with each other's business or customers. The husband was still receiving disbursements from Arrow.

¶ 7 The case was tried during the last week of September of 2010; the Decree of Dissolution of Marriage was filed on January 28, 2011. The husband was awarded $235,200.00 in property division alimony for his forty-nine (49) percent interest in Arrow. This amount is forty-seven times the amount of his initial investment in Arrow, just five years before the divorce was filed.

¶ 8 The valuation of the business was not conducted pursuant to the terms of the Agreement. Both sides presented expert valuation testimony during the divorce trial. The valuations were significantly different. The procedures in the Agreement providing for a third tie-breaking evaluation were not used.8

¶ 9 The wife's expert, Kenneth W. Klingenberg (Klingenberg), was a certified public accountant and a member of the Oklahoma Bar. His valuation was made using an income method and an excess earnings approach, with a December 31, 2009, valuation date. He testified that he used the end of the business year valuation date because the records were better and because the divorce was filed on December 28, 2009. His valuation reduced the total value of Arrow because of diversion of $298,085.58 in business by the husband. Klingenberg calculated, using Dean's figures, that the loss in the value of Arrow because of diverted business was $104,330.9 His buy/sell valuation of Arrow was $216,315. He included the diverted business in the valuation because, although it occurred after the valuation date, a subsequent event, it was both known and knowable and thus should have been used in the valuation.

¶ 10 The husband's expert, Ralph E. Blodgett (Blodgett), was a certified public accountant, a member of the Oklahoma Bar and a Certified Valuation Analyst. He used the capitalized cash flow method of valuation with a valuation date of November 30, 2009, which he stated was required by the agreement. He considered the filing of the divorce to be the Event of Dissolution. He calculated Arrow's value at $480,000, and the husband's interest at $235,200.10 He testified that the diversion of business by husband in 2010, was not known or knowable as of the date of valuation and thus could not be used to value the business.11 This method precludes any reduction in the value of the business because of the husband's competing business. There was no evaluation of the enhanced benefits the husband received. The trial court valued the business at $480,000. The husband was awarded property division alimony of $235,200.

¶ 11 The Court of Civil Appeals affirmed the value which the trial court placed on Arrow and the resulting amount of property division awarded husband for his portion of Arrow. We granted certiorari on May 14, 2012, to consider the disputed valuation of Arrow in the property division.

¶ 12 THE TRIAL COURT ERRED IN FAILING TO CONSIDER A REDUCTION IN VALUATION OF THE MARITAL BUSINESS BECAUSE OF HUSBAND'S BUSINESS COMPETITION.

¶ 13 The wife argues that the husband's direct competition with Arrow caused a decrease in the value of the business which should have been reflected in the trial court's determination of Arrow's valuation and thus the amount of the husband's property division alimony. She argues that there was "double-dipping" by the husband because he had income from business diverted from Arrow and income from Arrow, with no adjustment whatsoever for the decline in Arrow's value because of this.

¶ 14 The husband argues that, under the Agreement, the date of valuation was unalterably November 30, 2009. He also argues that, because his competition against Arrow took place after November 30, 2009, it cannot be used to alter the value of Arrow on the valuation date. He contends that, because the Agreement permitted his competition, he cannot be penalized for his actions by a reduction of his property award.

¶ 15 At the outset we note that the agreement was a buyout agreement and failing a buyout, an agreement for the dissolution of a business, which neither party followed. They did not obtain appraisers by the time they were required to do so under the contract. They did not follow the contract requirement that, if the appraisers did not agree, they would hire a third appraiser and follow an averaging valuation. Had the parties followed their own agreement, this matter could have been settled by the parties without the need to involve the trial court in the valuation process.

¶ 16 A divorce suit is one of equitable cognizance in which the trial court has discretionary power to divide the marital estate.12 The trial court must follow the provisions of 43 O.S.2006 § 121 which require a fair and equitable division of property acquired during the marriage by the joint industry of the husband and wife.13 The trial court has wide latitude in determining what part of jointly-acquired property shall be awarded to each party.14 However, a marital estate need not necessarily be equally divided to be an equitable division because the words just and reasonable in § 121 are not synonymous with equal.15 An appellate court will not disturb the trial court's property division absent a finding of abuse of discretion or a finding that the decision is clearly contrary to the weight of the evidence.16

¶ 17 Jointly-acquired property is that which is accumulated by the joint industry of the spouses during the marriage.17 A marital estate need not be equally divided in order for there to be equitable division, as the wife converted what was, prior to the marriage, her separate property, into a marital business by permitting the husband to "buy" an interest in the business for $5,000.00. Consequently, Arrow is now considered marital property subject to division in the divorce. However, a mere valuation of Arrow as of a date certain, November 30, 2009, or December 28, 2009, does not determine what portion of the value of the business was the result of the husband's efforts, the wife's efforts, or their joint efforts.

¶ 18 The trial court was not bound by the valuation date set forth in the Agreement when placing a value on the business for purposes of property division. Pursuant to Thielenhaus v. Thielenhaus, 1995 OK 5, 890 P.2d 925, the trial court is vested with discretion in determining the cut-off time for the valuation of marital assets, and the date of valuation is to be determined by the trial court after due consideration of all the circumstances of the case.18 The trial court is obligated by statute to ensure a fair and just division of the marital assets, and the only mechanism permitted by statute to override that obligation is an antenuptial agreement between the parties. The Agreement at issue in this case was not entered into until after the parties married.19 The trial court wrongly held that the parties' Agreement, which they did not follow, required it to reach an unfair result in distributing the company's value between them.

¶ 19 The Agreement and the Unit Purchase Agreement provide no valuation of Arrow. The wife permitted the husband to buy into her existing business for what appears to be a nominal purchase price. Klingenberg's valuation stated that the total income for Arrow in 2003 was $126,431; the gross receipts were $635,549. The husband paid $5,000 for his forty-nine percent of Arrow and received forty-seven times that amount in property division alimony. To be equitable, any determination of a value for the marital business must take into account the value of the business when Colclasure bought his forty-nine percent share, and the proportionate increase in value due to the joint industry of the husband and wife.

¶ 20 We note that in Lemons v. Lemons, 2006 OK CIV APP 5, 128 P.3d 1113, the court held that as a general rule the trial court should not consider how much either party contributed to the purchase of jointly acquired property, because a gift from one party to the other is presumed. The Lemons court relied on this Court's decision in Shackelton v. Sherrard, 1963 OK 193, 385 P.2d 898. In Shackelton, we held that the interests of married joint tenants are presumed to be equal, because one of the characteristics of joint tenancy is the equality of the interest.20 Here, the marital property, like that in Lemons, is not held by joint tenancy and is not subject to the presumption of equality of interest. To the extent that Lemons contradicts this Court's holding in Shackelton, it is overruled.

¶ 21 This Court has also recognized the concept of double-dipping as it relates to accounting for disbursements from marital property during the pendency of a divorce.21 In Mocnik v. Mocnik, 1992 OK 99, 838 P.2d 500, the wife removed $7,000 from joint funds at the time of the marital separation. To avoid double-dipping, the $7,000 was included as a portion of the wife's property settlement. This action was not altered on the appeal. In this cause, the trial court failed to address payments to the husband from Arrow while the divorce was pending or income to the husband and wife. These are examples of double-dipping and should have been addressed in the alimony in lieu of property settlement award to the husband.

¶ 22 The trial court's property division in this case is clearly contrary to the weight of the evidence. The husband was a named co-owner of Arrow while intentionally competing against Arrow. He was operating a competing business in the Arrow showroom. He used Arrow equipment in the competing business. It was not ordinary competition, but competition from an individual familiar with the inner workings of the business and its client base. The trial court should have considered the exact loss to the value of Arrow because of the husband's competition and adjusted the husband's share of the property division accordingly.

¶ 23 The husband's argument that the agreement permitted him to operate a competing business is not relevant to the valuation issue. The question is not whether he may be sued for breach of fiduciary duty, but rather whether his actions lowered Arrow's value so that he received more money in the property settlement than he should have received. The husband's competition was permitted under the contract. It is not an issue of permission, but of benefit to one party at the expense of another party.

¶ 24 The husband also argues that the valuation date of November 30, 2009, cannot be altered and that any offset in Arrow's value because of his competition is not a factor because it took place in 2010, after the valuation date. The Agreement set out procedures for what may be called a minority owner buy-out if that member becomes disqualified as a member because of divorce. The Agreement provided:

¶ 25 The valuation and buy-out provisions of the Agreement were not followed. This is not the rewriting of an unambiguous contract. The parties wanted to cherry pick the contract for the terms most favorable to each of them. The entire contract was followed by neither party. There is no provision in the Agreement which provides that the members will try and continue the business together if a divorce is filed. The Agreement provides for a reasonable and timely buy-out of the disqualified member. In this case, the court's equity power in determining the property division is sufficient to permit it to consider a property valuation which does not require a November 30, 2009, valuation date.

CONCLUSION

¶ 26 The property settlement in a divorce case is an equitable matter and will not be overturned unless it is clearly against the weight of the evidence.22 The evidence shows that the trial court made no determination of the actual increase in the value of the business from the date husband became a part of the business. There was no determination of how much double-dipping took place when the husband received money from the business which was not deducted from the property settlement. There was no determination concerning how much husband's direct, insider competition against Arrow devalued it.

¶ 27 There is a basic evidentiary question as to the exact amount of business the husband diverted. The record does not give a balanced picture of how this was calculated, but rather relies on the wife's expert, who in turn relies on the wife's calculations. There was no determination of the value of the business at the time husband bought his share. These questions must all be covered by the trial court the second time around. The evidence, taken as a whole, shows that the valuation of Arrow, and thus the husband's portion of the property settlement, was against the clear weight of the evidence.

CERTIORARI PREVIOUSLY GRANTED; COURT OF CIVIL APPEALS OPINION VACATED; TRIAL COURT REVERSED AND REMANDED.

TAYLOR, C.J., COLBERT, V.C.J., KAUGER, EDMONDSON, REIF, and GURICH, JJ., concur.

WATT, WINCHESTER, and COMBS, JJ., dissent.

WATT, J., with whom WINCHESTER, J. and COMBS, J. join, dissenting:

¶ 1 The petitioner/appellant, Lori Colclasure (wife), sold a forty-nine percent interest in her flooring business to the respondent/appellee, Kent Colclasure (husband), before the marriage. The majority remands the instant cause for the trial court to re-evaluate the worth of the business, including any loss in its value due to the husband having opened a competing business and to the draws he took from the business after divorce proceedings were instituted. It also directs the trial court to value the business as of the date of the husband's purchase along with any money he received as an owner of the business. In so doing, the majority invades the province of the trial court while re-writing the parties' contract for what appears to be the single purpose of increasing the wife's settlement award. This I will not do. Therefore, I dissent.

¶ 2 a) No abuse of discretion occurred in the property division.

¶ 3 The majority pays lip service to the well-established rule that the trial court has considerable discretion in making decisions regarding the division of property upon divorce. The opinion provides in pertinent part at ¶ 15:

Nevertheless, it goes on to find abuse where none exists. In order to do so, the majority abandons the rule it claims for guidance and the standard for upholding a decision made by the one person in the judicial chain with the opportunity to hear the evidence, observe the parties and the witnesses, and form an independent conclusion guided by application of legal standards to the facts presented.

¶ 4 An abuse of discretion occurs when a court bases its decision on an erroneous conclusion of law,1 when there is no rational basis in evidence for the ruling,2 or if it acts arbitrarily.3 None of these conditions exist in this cause.

¶ 5 There are valid reasons upon which the trial court may have determined the husband's valuation of the business interest to have been more accurate than that of the wife's. First, the wife's expert recognized that there was an error of approximately $144,000.00 in his calculations.4 Second, the appraiser acknowledged that there was a method in the parties' agreement for the determination of a date to utilize in determining the valuation of the business, which he did not utilize.5 Third, the report itself had conflicting dates upon which different capitalization rates6 were utilized, which may have indicated that the wife's appraiser was "cherry picking" information from reports of different dates and utilizing the information most favorable to his client. This is demonstrated by the expert's own testimony where he admits completing an initial report in which he utilized a capitalization rate of 36.96% and then applied a rate of 47.05% in the report submitted at trial.7 It is also apparent in the selection of a number for the corporation's gross profits.8 Third, the same witness admitted to using the highest tax rate available to a corporation in his valuation estimates rather than the tax rate applicable to the flooring business.9 Fourth, the wife's expert agreed that his original valuation of the company was some $300,000.00 lower than the final draft and that if he had not included estimated values for diversion of income and had not utilized the inflated capitalization rate, his estimate would have been comparable to the estimate made by the husband's appraiser.10 Finally, the wife's expert admitted that his valuation was not computed in accordance with generally accepted accounting principals although it was done pursuant to National Association of Certified Valuation Analyst Professional Standards.11

¶ 6 The majority recognizes that the trial court had before it evidence that would support the trial court's property division. It acknowledges that the valuation was made by an individual who is a member of the Oklahoma Bar Association and a Certified Valuation Analyst. It is of no import that there was also evidence from another source which would support a different division of the property interests. There being no evidence sufficient to show the trial court abused its discretion as to the property division, its ruling should be affirmed.

¶ 7 b) To reach the result recommended by the majority, it must rewrite an unambiguous contract. An action prohibited by Oklahoma jurisprudence.

¶ 8 The Operating Agreement (agreement) was signed by both the husband and the wife as "members." It provides in pertinent part that each member may engage in business, without limitation, in business interests and activities that are in direct competition with the Company. The agreement goes on to state, in mandatory language,12 that no provision of the contract shall be deemed to prohibit a member from having a competing business or engaging in competitive activities.13

¶ 9 Upon divorce, the agreement provides that the company shall dissolve and its affairs be wound up with the right to purchase being given to any remaining member. The same contract has a formula for determining a purchase price which utilizes an appraised value where no agreed value can be reached. Again, mandatory language provides that the "appraised value" shall mean the value determined as of the last day of the month immediately prior to the month in which the event of dissolution occurs, here the appraisal date is undoubtedly the last day of the month prior to the month in which the petition for divorce was filed. In this case, the "event of dissolution" was the wife's filing for divorce on December 28, 2009. Clearly, the agreement, which both parties signed, intended the date of valuation to be November 30, 2009, not some date thereafter which might take into effect changes in condition of the operation of the flooring business.14

¶ 10 Intent at execution controls the meaning of written contractual terms15 and the extent of the obligation is defined by the promise given. Contract language is accorded its plain and ordinary meaning absent a term intended to carry a specific technical meaning.16 Where terms are defined the parties are bound by those definitions.17 Extrinsic evidence need not be introduced when the language is clear and explicit.18 If the contract is complete in itself and, viewed in its entirety unambiguous, its language is the only legitimate evidence of intent.19 The courts decide, as a matter of law, whether a contract provision is ambiguous.20 Absent illegality, the parties are free to bargain as they see fit, and this Court will neither make a new contract nor rewrite existing terms.21

¶11 There is nothing ambiguous about the agreement entered by the parties. It clearly and unambiguously allows direct competition and provides the formula by which the value of the company is to be determined. The wife made a bad business decision when she sold her then fiancé forty-nine percent (49%) of her flooring company for $5,000.00. The husband did not "double dip" by continuing to receive his share of the benefits arising from the interest he held in the wife's flooring business and nothing prohibited his entering into competition with the original flooring enterprise. Rather, such competition was expressly considered in the agreement itself.

¶ 12 There was no abuse of discretion in acknowledging the terms of the contract or in holding the parties to those strictures. The abuse occurs when the majority steps in to make a property division that "looks fair" but which is not what the parties clearly intended nor is it that for which they negotiated.

CONCLUSION

¶ 13 A review of the property division for an abuse of discretion does not allow this Court to substitute its judgment for that of the trial court. Because no such abuse occurred, the property division award should be upheld. I would do so. Therefore, I dissent.