Wife Held Prevailing Party for Attorney’s Fees in Contempt Action Following Tennessee Divorce

Tennessee law case summary on attorney’s fees in divorce and family law from the Court of Appeals.

Leon Williams v. Jannie Williams

As part of their Tennessee divorce, Leon and Jannie Williams executed a marital dissolution agreement in 2012, and it was subsequently approved by the court.  As part of the agreement, the husband was required to pay off the mortgage on property they owned in Nashville.  He was required to do so within 90 days.

The husband failed to pay off the mortgage, and the wife filed a motion to enforce the agreement about five months later.  Ultimately, the wife filed a petition to hold the husband in contempt, and the husband followed up with various contempt petitions of his own.

The trial court set a hearing for May, 2013, to sort out the various allegations.  Less than a week before this hearing, the husband finally paid off the mortgage.  The court proceeded with the hearing, and first noted that the contempt motion was moot since the husband had now finally complied with the agreement.  The judge noted, however, that the agreement called for attorney’s fees incurred for enforcing the agreement.  Therefore, the court determined that the wife was the prevailing party on the motion, and that the husband was ordered to pay $4,000 of her attorney’s fees, which totaled over $8,000.  Dissatisfied with this outcome, the husband appealed to the Tennessee Court of Appeals.  He raised ten different issues on appeal, but the appeals court noted that most of them were moot, other than the award of attorney’s fees.

The court noted that the marital termination agreement called for attorney’s fees to the “prevailing party” in a dispute.  The husband argued that he was the prevailing party, because the contempt motion was dismissed after he complied at the last minute, and that the contempt motion had not been necessary.

Even though the husband downplayed the importance of the contempt motion in his ultimate compliance, the appeals court was not swayed.  It noted that he was well past the deadline and persisted in non-compliance until the case was almost ready for hearing.

And even though the case was ultimately dismissed as moot, the court agreed with the lower court that the wife had been the prevailing party.  She had achieved the primary benefit she sought from instituting the proceedings, and this is the test of whether she prevailed.

In addition, since the wife prevailed on appeal, the court held that she was also entitled to her attorney’s fees for the appeal.  The case was remanded for a determination of the amount of those fees.

No. M2013-01910-COA-R3-CV (Tenn. Ct. App. Jan. 30, 2015).

See original opinion for exact language.  Legal citations omitted.

To learn more, see Attorney’s Fees in Tennessee Divorce Law FAQs.