Postnuptial Agreements in Massachusetts

Many people are aware of premarital contracts such as prenuptial agreements (prenups) and what they are designed to do. Prenups clarify financial arrangements before a couple gets married so that if there is a breakdown in the marriage subsequently and a divorce is pending, division of assets become less problematic. A prenup is designed to help avoid disputes and lengthy court battles.

Postnuptial agreements (postnups or marriage agreements) are similar to prenups but occur after marriage, not before. Postnuptial agreements have become more popular in recent years and tend to be sought when a couple feels that their marriage is going through a stressful period, but there is no intention as yet of seeking a divorce. Postnups may also be sought by a couple if they are worried that the possibility of a divorce may happen at some unspecified time in the future and want to eliminate the possibility of costly disputes.

Postnups are enforceable in Massachusetts

In Massachusetts, postnuptial agreements are enforceable, i.e. are legally binding, similar to a business contract, but there are some exacting criteria that must be met before a postnup can be considered valid. The legal basis of enforceability of postnups in Massachusetts was established by a case (Ansin vs. Craven-Ansin) heard by the Supreme Judicial Council (SJC) in 2010. The case centered around a dispute between a couple who had been married for nearly twenty years before problems in their marriage prompted them to create a postnuptial agreement, although at the time they were determined to save their marriage.

When the marriage became irreconcilable, the husband filed for divorce, but the wife contested the postnuptial agreement and appealed a decision by the Probate and Family Law Court. The SJC determined that postnuptial agreements were enforceable as long as they hadn’t been made when a divorce was already imminent, or part of divorce proceedings, and that five specific criteria were met. The decision by the SJC concerning this case meant that it established the principle of enforceability of postnuptial agreements in the state, similar to a position which had become established in several other states.

Criteria established for enforceability of a postnuptial agreement

The SJC’s decision on Ansin vs. Craven-Ansin established the enforceability of postnuptial agreements, but each case has to be thoroughly assessed to ensure that the agreement is valid. The following five criteria have to be met before it can be established that a postnup can be enforced by the court.

• Did each party have the opportunity for independent counsel before the agreement was executed?
• Was there any fraud or coercion involved to ensure consent was obtained prior to the agreement?
• Were all assets fully disclosed prior to the execution of the agreement?
• Did each spouse knowingly waive their rights to property-sharing (equitable division of assets) and to support in the event of a divorce?
• Were the terms of the agreement fair and reasonable at the time of the execution and fair and reasonable at the time of the filing of a divorce?

The criteria for enforceability in more detail

Not all divorcing spouses have a dispute about a postnuptial agreement. That’s why such agreements are made in the first place, to make financial division easier to arrange if a divorce is filed. However, even if a postnup has been made prior to a divorce, one or other of the two spouses may still decide to dispute the terms of the original agreement and state their opposition to it being enforced. The decision whether to enforce the agreement may be left to the Probate and Family Court to make, but its assessment of the agreement will depend on evidence that the five criteria listed above have been met. In this case, the spouse who wishes to enforce the agreement must in most cases provide evidence that the criteria were met.

1. Did each party have the opportunity for independent counsel before the agreement was executed? The point of this is not that every agreement was made using legal advice from an attorney, but that each spouse was able to have taken advantage of legal advice if they wished to do so.
2. Was there any fraud or coercion involved to ensure consent was obtained prior to the agreement? As with business contracts and agreements that are legally binding, any evidence that the postnup was fraudulent, or made in circumstances that involved one of the spouses coercing the other spouse, would invalidate its enforceability. Included here is an agreement that was made when a divorce was already intended, rather than genuinely separated by time and intention.
3. Were all assets fully disclosed prior to the execution of the agreement? If the disputing spouse can prove that not all assets were disclosed at the time of the postnup, then the court may decide that the agreement could not be enforced.
4. Did each spouse knowingly waive their rights to property-sharing (equitable division of assets) and to support in the event of a divorce? Typically, a couple going through divorce who cannot reconcile their differences about how assets should be divided seeks a decision by the court. In most cases, apart from assets that were acquired before the marriage or were acquired by inheritance, the court orders assets to be divided equally between the two spouses. A postnuptial agreement may decide otherwise. Often, a dispute arises because the spouse who is likely to receive the lesser share of the assets thinks that they have a better chance of retaining more of the marital assets if the court decides to order a 50/50 split. In this case, the spouse who is seeking enforceability must show evidence that each spouse had already waived this right at the time of the agreement.

5. Were the terms of the agreement fair and reasonable at the time of the execution and fair and reasonable at the time of the filing of a divorce? This criterion is probably the most difficult and challenging for a judge to decide on. There are many factors that the judge will consider and assess before it is decided that the terms of the agreement were fair and reasonable, both at the time the agreement was made and at the time of the divorce. The judge will take into consideration such matters as whether the needs of any children had been integrated into the agreement, the duration of the marriage, the abilities of the spouses to make a fair agreement in the first place, what legal advice they got and whether the advice given was sound.

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