Utah Prenuptial Agreements

La Juana and Clay met via newspaper ad in 1986. Clay flew his own airplane out to meet La Juana in Texas, where she worked as a nurse’s aide for $3.50 an hour. Clay asked her to marry him and move back to Utah just five days later. He told her she could quit her job because he would take care of her. La Juana agreed, and they flew back to Utah and lived happily ever after until Clay, unfortunately, died in an airplane crash. At the time of Clay’s death, he had about $1.5 million in assets, including airplanes, commercial real estate, cars, retirement funds, and investment accounts.

Before the marriage, Clay presented a prenup to La Juana. The prenup stated that if they were still married at the time of his death, she would receive 50% of his estate. Clay’s only other heirs were his nieces and nephews. La Juana typed up the prenup herself and signed it. She was never provided any of his financial information before signing the prenup, but nonetheless, she signed it.

After Clay’s death, La Juana requested to become the sole heir of his estate. Clay’s nieces and nephews had other plans; they also requested to receive their part of the estate. La Juana claimed that the prenup should be thrown out because she was coerced to sign it. She claimed that she had to move from Texas to Utah and quit her job to marry Clay and that she could not marry him without signing the prenup. The court disagreed with La Juana and said that she voluntarily signed the agreement of her own free will. She understood the contents of the contract and agreed to be bound by its terms. Thus, the prenuptial agreement was valid and enforceable.

The moral of the story is that if you want to throw out a prenup based on coercion, you must prove that you did not sign the prenup voluntarily. You need to claim more than just, “I moved to a different state for my spouse, quit my job, and had no other choice but to sign the prenup.”

A 2015 case from a Court of Appeals in Utah discussed what fraud *doesn’t* look like when executing a prenuptial agreement. Husband and Wife executed a prenup that required all the property owned before the marriage to remain separate. While the couple did not amass many assets during the marriage, the husband’s most significant interest in his family’s landscaping business was the most significant asset.

At the time of the divorce, Wife wanted to throw out the prenup to allow access to Husband’s premarital assets, such as the interest in the family business. She claimed that the prenup was fraudulently executed because Husband did not disclose his finances, and she never had knowledge of the worth of his business and other minor assets.

The court disagreed with Wife and declared that fraudulence in a prenuptial agreement is not determined by whether there was financial disclosure or not. A fraudulently executed prenup is determined by falsely representing material information knowingly. In this case, Wife had waived her right to disclosure, so financial disclosure was not actually required here.

The moral of the story is? Always include a financial disclosure in your prenup (or a waiver of such), and don’t knowingly misrepresent material information in your prenup otherwise, it will be thrown out for fraud!

Husband and Wife married in 1991 in California, with the Husband, a semi-retired multi-millionaire, insisting on a prenuptial agreement to protect his assets. They selected California as their choice of law for the prenup.

Eventually, they moved to Utah, where the Husband invested $12.8 million to develop the Sorrel River Ranch Resort and earned $1.5 million from another venture. They lived a luxurious lifestyle for several years. Then, in 2005, the Husband filed for divorce.

The Wife argued for community property rights (California law) so she could get 50% of his business earnings, not just his salary. She believed the term “earnings” in the prenup should encompass anything received as an equivalent for services. The prenup stated that any earnings should be split 50/50, which is why she was arguing for this term to have a broader scope. The court ultimately found the Wife’s interpretation of “earnings” conflicted with the entirety of the prenup and affirmed the agreement’s intent to protect the Husband’s assets.

In other words? The prenup was analyzed as a whole, and the court looked at the general intent of the contract (i.e., the husband insisting on the prenup to protect his assets). The court noted that Utah law construes prenups “as a whole in order to harmonize its various provisions” and to ensure that the terms are “interpreted in light of the remaining provisions of the prenup.”