Fox v. Fox
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In this divorce case, the husband disputed the validity and enforceability of the parties' self-styled "Premarital Agreement." In 2000, appellant Joanne Fox ("Wife") and appellee Lyle M. Fox ("Husband") divorced after 25 years of marriage. The divorce decree and incorporated settlement agreement required Husband to pay Wife monthly child support of $500, as well as monthly alimony of $1,500 for one year, $2,000 for the next three years, and $1,500 thereafter until Wife was 59 years old. When the parties remarried, the Husband's child support and alimony obligations were extinguished. In February 2010, Wife again filed for divorce, and sought to enforce the Premarital Agreement as a legally binding prenuptial agreement from her first marriage, citing a provision in the agreement that she claimed entitling her to continued support payments. After a hearing, the trial court entered an order ruling, among other things, that the Premarital Agreement, reviewed as a whole, was a "made in contemplation of marriage" but did not fit the statutory definition of a prenuptial agreement, and that it therefore was void because it was not attested by at least two witnesses as required by OCGA 19-3-63. After the trial court granted a certificate of interlocutory review, the Supreme Court granted Wife's interlocutory appeal. Husband argued, among other things, that the agreement was actually a "marriage contract . . . made in contemplation of marriage," not one that contemplated legal issues and rights of the parties upon divorce. The Court found that the parties' "Premarital Agreement," viewed as a whole, was not a binding prenuptial agreement made in anticipation of divorce, and the trial court therefore correctly denied its enforcement due to noncompliance with the attestation requirement of OCGA 19-3-63.
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