What If Your Marital Settlement Agreement Conflicts With Your Prenup?
Only an indefatigable optimist will tell you that prenuptial agreements prevent divorce, but anyone can see that they are effective at making divorce cases less messy. Yes, there are cases where couples in the process of divorce disagree about the interpretation, but they are the exception to the rule. For example, somewhere in South Florida, there is a wealthy businessman who promised, in his prenup, to award his wife their multimillion-dollar house if the husband committed misdemeanor or felony domestic violence; the parties have been arguing in court for years over whether the circumstances surrounding a call the wife made to the police around the time the parties separated counted as domestic violence. If you sign a prenuptial agreement and later get divorced, bring a copy of your prenup with you to divorce mediation so that you can be sure that the terms of your marital settlement agreement (MSA) do not conflict with the prenup. If your goal is to be one of the lucky few whose prenup prevents divorce or, failing that, part of the majority whose prenup makes the divorce less of a mess, contact a Boca Raton prenuptial and postnuptial agreement lawyer.
The Supportive Relationship Loophole: A Cautionary Tale
A discrepancy between the prenuptial agreement and the MSA led a Florida man to get stuck in a legal battle with his divorce lawyer long after his ex-wife had moved on, supported by alimony. When Stephen married his wife, they signed a prenup indicating that he would pay her $100,000 in alimony per year for the number of complete years the marriage had lasted. The prenup said that the alimony obligations would terminate when the duration had expired, or else when one of the spouses died or the wife remarried, whichever happened first.
When Stephen’s lawyer wrote a first draft of the MSA, she included a supportive relationship clause, stating that if the wife moved in with a domestic partner, Stephen’s alimony obligations would end even if his ex-wife did not marry her partner. She later revised the MSA before submitting it to the judge, making it match the prenup, which did not say anything about a supportive relationship.
A year after the divorce became final, Stephen’s ex-wife moved in with her boyfriend. The new couple had a child together while the ex-wife was still receiving alimony from Stephen. This led to a lengthy legal dispute between Stephen and his lawyer. The case went to the appeals court, which remanded the case to the trial court to determine whether, despite what the prenup and the MSA said, Stephen could stop paying alimony because his ex-wife was in a financially supportive relationship with a new partner.
Contact Schwartz | White About Disputes Over Prenuptial Agreements
A South Florida family law attorney can help you ensure that your prenuptial agreement says what you think it says and does not conflict with other important documents. Contact Schwartz | White in Boca Raton, Florida about your case.
Source:
scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=4306529508366887&q=divorce+boyfriend&hl=en&as_sdt=4,10&as_ylo=2015&as_yhi=2025
