Post-Nuptial Agreement Kept TN Wife From Getting Wrongful Death Money
Tennessee law case summary on post-nuptial agreement law in divorce and family law from the Court of Appeals.
Gary Rickman v. Virginia Rickman – Tennessee divorce postnuptial agreement.
The husband and wife were married in 1987. In 2001, they entered into a postnuptial agreement. In that agreement, both parties waived their rights in the other spouse’s property, including a share of the spouse’s estate. It stated that the agreement would also be binding upon the heirs or executors of either spouse. In 2010, the husband died, and in the probate proceedings, the wife made no claim against his estate.
In 2011, the husband’s executor filed a wrongful death suit against NHC Healthcare McMinnville, and that case was settled. The executor filed a declaratory judgment action to determine the distribution of that settlement. The wife made a claim in the declaratory judgment action, but the trial court held that she was not entitled to any portion of the settlement, due to the postnuptial agreement. The wife appealed to the Tennessee Court of Appeals.
In her appeal, she argued that the postnuptial agreement and the settlement of the estate case should not have been construed as extinguishing her rights to the proceeds of the wrongful death case. The Court of Appeals treated the case as one for summary judgment, and first noted that there was no genuine issue of material fact.
The court then went on to note that the proceeds of a wrongful death case are not property of the decedent’s estate, and that they pass outside the estate through the intestacy laws. The wife cited cases from other states in which wrongful death claims were allowed in similar circumstances, but the court determined that those cases involved very different state statutes, or were distinguishable factually. In particular, the court noted that the wife’s only claim to the wrongful death proceeds was due to the fact that she had once been married to the husband. Therefore, her waiver of any such claim seemed to cover the situation, since the agreement covered “all other rights which they may have acquired by reason of their marriage.” Since this language was very broad, the court held that it covered the situation of a wrongful death settlement.
For these reasons, the Court of Appeals affirmed the judgment of the trial court. The Court of Appeals remanded the case to the trial court for a resolution of the declaratory judgment action.
No. M2013-00251-COA-R3-CV (Tenn. Ct. App. Oct. 15, 2013).
See original opinion for exact language. Legal citations omitted.
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