TN Lawyer Faces Malpractice For Invalid Prenuptial Agreement

Tennessee case summary on prenuptial agreements in divorce.

The plaintiff in this Tennessee malpractice case got married in 2006, but before the wedding, he hired the defendant attorney to draft a prenuptial agreement. In the agreement, the husband and wife waived any claim for alimony, and stated their intent to keep their property separate.

The husband and wife were married and had one child, but separated in 2013, and the husband filed for divorce. The wife asked for alimony, and argued that the husband had not fully disclosed his assets. She also claimed that she was never advised of her right to talk to her own attorney.

After hearing the evidence, the divorce court set aside the prenuptial agreement. The husband then filed a malpractice claim against the attorney.

The defendant attorney moved to have the case thrown out, and argued that he did not deviate from the required standard of care.

The court in the malpractice case granted the attorney’s motion for summary judgment. It held that he had not breached the standard of care, because the agreement listed assets and provided that each party had knowledge of one another’s assets. The husband then appealed to the Tennessee Court of Appeals. He argued that the trial court should not have granted summary judgment, but allowed the case to proceed.

The Court of Appeals first noted that evidence other than the contract is not allowed to contradict the contract. In this case, the attorney argued that the wife was aware of the husband’s assets, but acknowledged that the list attached to the agreement itself was not complete. Therefore, summary judgment was not appropriate in the case, because there were still factual issues that had to be determined. For example, there was the issue of whether the wife possessed independent knowledge of the husband’s assets. Therefore, there were still genuine issues of material fact, and summary judgment was not appropriate.

For these reasons, the Court of Appeals reinstated the case, and remanded it to the trial court for further proceedings.

No. E2015-01522-COA-R3-CV (Tenn. Ct. App. Apr. 13, 2016).

See original opinion for exact language. Legal citations omitted.

To learn more, see Prenuptial Agreement: Pros and Cons in Tennessee Divorce Law.