When you need a divorce attorney Orlando to help with setting aside a postnuptial agreement Florida, call Orlando postnuptial agreement attorney Jonathan Jacobs of the Jacobs Law Firm at 407-335-8113. Jacobs Law Firm litigates cases where a spouse is seeking to set aside a postnuptial agreement and cases where a spouse is seeking to enforce a postnuptial (defend against setting it aside). Clients often ask “can you cancel a postnuptial agreement?” The answer is one that lawyers are all too familiar with, “it depends”. The outcome depends on the unique facts of your divorce, as well as on the viewpoint of the family law judge assigned to your case. Call us today to schedule a consultation to discuss the facts of your divorce.
The Florida Supreme Court provided family litigants with the ultimate test for the enforceability of a postnuptial agreement in Florida. The case on point is Casto v. Casto, 508 So. 2d 330 (Fla. 1987) in which the primary issue is setting aside a postnuptial agreement Florida. A Florida postnuptial agreement may be challenged on two different levels with multiple nuanced bases. Speak with an Orlando postnuptial agreement attorney today to determine the strength of your postnuptial agreement, whether you are on offense or on the defensive.
In Casto v. Casto, the Florida Supreme Court lays out that a postnup agreement may be set aside or modified if the attacking spouse proves the alleged agreement was obtained by fraud, deceit, duress, coercion, misrepresentation, or overreaching. Each one of these legal terms of art may be argued. Some hypothetical examples include if a spouse has forged the other spouse’s signature in executing a Florida postnuptial agreement. Perhaps a spouse was tricked into signing a document that he or she was told was some other kind of legal paper. Maybe a postnuptial agreement created a circumstance where one spouse receives every asset and the other only debts. The potential factual circumstances are unlimited in their variegation both for and against an agreement’s enforceability. An Orlando postnuptial agreement attorney can discuss your case in great detail with you and provide insight into how your case might unfold.
Orlando Postnuptial Agreement Attorney
The Florida Supreme Court’s second level of the test for enforceability in setting aside a postnuptial agreement Florida provides that the spouse challenging the agreement must establish that the agreement makes an unfair or unreasonable outcome for that spouse, given the relative circumstances of the parties. Careful readers, because if the Florida postnuptial agreement is years old, those circumstances under review are based on those at the time of its execution. If the challenging spouse establishes a postnuptial is unfair or unreasonable (not just that the spouse made a bad fiscal bargain), a presumption arises that there was either concealment by the defending party, or that the attacking spouse lacked any knowledge of the defending spouse’s finances at the time the agreement was reached.
This is not the entirety of the Casto test for setting aside a postnuptial agreement Florida. If the attacking spouse can prove that the purported agreement was unconscionably unbalanced in favor of one spouse, the burden would shift to the defending spouse. Should Orlando postnuptial agreement attorney Jacobs Law Firm represent the defending spouse, we might argue that they made full disclosure of their finances contemporaneous to the execution of the postnup, and that because the parties were not dealing at arm’s length (having been married), the other spouse should have known about marital finances, and had the opportunity to make reasonable inquiry thereto.
If you need help with setting aside a postnuptial agreement Florida, call Orlando postnuptial agreement attorney Jonathan Jacobs of the Jacobs Law Firm at 407-335-8113 and receive insight into your predicament.