recognizing the confidential relationship between a husband and wife imposes the same duties of good faith and fair dealing on spouses as required of partners and other fiduciaries
How later courts described this case
- recognizing the confidential relationship between a husband and wife imposes the same duties of good faith and fair dealing on spouses as required of partners and other fiduciaries
- observing that involuntary execution “alleviates the need for proof of all elements required in common law defenses” such that party need not prove knowledge or reliance as would be required to show fraud
- holding that the common-law defenses were not eliminated by the Family Code
Written by the judges who cited it.
The opinion
COHEN, Justice,
concurring.
I agree with the result and most of the reasoning in the majority opinion, but, unlike the majority, I would hold that Family Code § 5.55 provides the exclusive means of attacking a post-marital property agreement. This section of the Family Code was enacted in order to make it easier to enforce marital property agreements. Compare Sadler v. Sadler, 769 S.W.2d 886 (Tex.1989) (construing the purpose of Section 5.46). It accomplished this by shifting the burden of proof to the spouse attacking the property agreement. In so doing, the legislature did not enact a cumulative remedies provision as it did, for example, in the Deceptive Trade Practices Act. Section 5.55, relating to post-marital agreements, was amended in the same bill that amended the present sec. 5.46 of the Family Code, which was part of the Uniform Premarital Agreement Act. The language of sections 5.55 and 5.46 is nearly identical.
I doubt that the legislature would have enacted such statutes, if it simultaneously intended to retain all the non-uniform common-law defenses that made it so difficult to uphold marital property agreements. If common-law defenses are still available, the legislature has made it harder to uphold marital property agreements by retaining all the old traps, while adding two new ones in the form of sections 5.55 and 5.46.
One court has recently disregarded a jury finding that a property agreement was unfair. It upheld the challenged agreement because there was no evidence of the elements required by sec. 5.46. Chiles v. Chiles, 779 S.W.2d 127 (Tex.App. — Houston [14th Dist.], 1989). This is the same as holding that sec. 5.46 is the exclusive means of challenging a premarital agreement. I would follow Chiles and extend it to hold that sec. 5.55 is the exclusive means of challenging a post-marital agreement.