Think your marriage contract is a sweetheart deal? Don’t be so sure

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Marriage contracts will be an efficient software for a pair wishing to create certainty within the occasion of their future separation. However failing to take care within the negotiation course of can result in the alternative end result, as was evident in a current case earlier than Justice Michael J. Valente of the Ontario Superior Court docket of Justice.

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Over the course of their 23-year marriage, the husband and spouse within the case had 4 youngsters. Roughly ten years after their marriage, they began a lumber brokerage enterprise, which achieved appreciable success. Within the years main as much as the events’ separation in 2019, the enterprise generated earnings for the household of roughly $2.5 million per 12 months. The husband owned 51 per cent of the enterprise, whereas the spouse owned the remaining 49 per cent.

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Whereas to start with of their relationship the events struggled to make ends meet, the success of the enterprise finally enabled the household to take pleasure in a lavish way of life. They lived in a 12,000-square-foot residence with two swimming pools. They owned two trip properties, one in Florida and a cottage in Ontario. The youngsters have been educated completely at non-public colleges. For this household, cash was not a difficulty.

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In 2008, the events signed a shareholder settlement that required the spouse to promote her curiosity within the lumber enterprise to the husband if the events ever separated.  In response to the husband, that settlement was designed to offer the spouse certainty ought to their relationship finish. The spouse, conversely, stated that she didn’t know the aim of the settlement and signed it as a result of the husband “grew to become threatening when questioned.”

5 years later, the events entered into a wedding contract. The contract supplied that, if the events have been to separate, the spouse would obtain $750,000 for her share within the enterprise and a one-time fee of $100,000 overlaying the whole lot of her entitlement to spousal assist. When the events certainly separated in 2019, the husband made each funds to the spouse.

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However the worth of the enterprise on the time was estimated within the vary of $11 million to $15.8 million and because of this the spouse commenced courtroom proceedings so as to right the monetary imbalance generated by the wedding contract.

The matter earlier than Justice Valente was at an interim stage of the courtroom proceedings — doubtlessly years earlier than the trial at which the enforceability of the wedding contract would finally be decided. In a movement, the spouse sought interim spousal assist from the husband within the quantity of $27,916 monthly, however the phrases of the wedding contract with which the husband had complied. The husband resisted the spouse’s declare, arguing the contract ought to be honoured. The query was thus: Ought to the spouse obtain spousal assist now or be pressured to attend till a call was made at trial?

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For Justice Valente, the start line was a recognition that “courts ought to try to uphold home contracts.”

He cited a Supreme Court docket of Canada case of Miglin v. Miglin which set out a two-stage evaluation to find out if spousal assist ought to be paid within the face of a wedding contract that claims in any other case.

Within the first stage, a choose should contemplate the “circumstances through which the settlement was negotiated and executed” and to weigh whether or not the phrases have been in step with the Divorce Act’s goals. If the settlement passes muster within the first stage of the evaluation, the second stage requires a choose to think about “the present circumstances of the events to find out whether or not the settlement nonetheless displays their unique intentions” and once more, to evaluate it in opposition to the goals of the Divorce Act.

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Justice Valente discovered no concern with Stage 1 of the Miglin check, however in addressing Stage 2 concluded that after a 23-year marriage, the spouse’s entitlement to a one-time spousal assist fee of $100,000 and the husband’s retention of the worthwhile household enterprise didn’t “acknowledge the financial benefits or disadvantages to the spouses arising from the wedding or its breakdown.” Such an end result was inconsistent with the goals of the Divorce Act.

Justice Valente’s conclusion doesn’t finish the dispute, nevertheless. Moderately, it pinpoints a severe concern with the wedding contract and acknowledges {that a} trial is important to find out if it ought to be upheld or put aside. That severe concern opened the door to an interim order for spousal assist and Justice Valente ordered the husband to pay the spouse spousal assist of $25,500 monthly pending the trial.

However these funds got here with a caveat for the spouse: Justice Valente made it clear that the fee of spousal assist on the interim stage was topic to adjustment based mostly on the end result on the trial — in different phrases, that if the trial choose have been to uphold the contract, the spouse could be obligated to reimburse the husband.

The choose famous she had “enough belongings” to cowl such compensation, if wanted.

Adam N. Black is a companion within the household legislation group at Torkin Manes LLP in Toronto.

ablack@torkinmanes.com