Elgar v. Elgar

• Decision Date: 13 August 1996
• Docket Number: No. 15272,15272
• Citation: Elgar v. Elgar, 679 A.2d 937, 238 Conn. 839 (Conn. 1996)
• Court: Connecticut Supreme Court
• Parties: Pamela F. ELGAR v. Eric M. ELGAR, Administrator (Estate of George P. Elgar).

Page 937

679 A.2d 937

238 Conn. 839

Pamela F. ELGAR v. Eric M. ELGAR, Administrator (Estate of George P. Elgar).

No. 15272.

Supreme Court of Connecticut.

Argued March 27, 1996.

Decided Aug. 13, 1996.

Miles F. McDonald, Jr., Greenwich, with whom was Donat C. Marchand, for appellant (plaintiff).

A. Reynolds Gordon, Bridgeport, with whom was Amy J. Greenberg, Stamford, for appellee (defendant).

Before PETERS, C.J., and CALLAHAN, BERDON, NORCOTT and KATZ, JJ.

NORCOTT, Justice.

The principal issue in this appeal is whether an antenuptial agreement between the plaintiff, Pamela F. Elgar, and her husband, George P. Elgar (decedent), which contains a New York choice of law provision, is valid and enforceable. The plaintiff appeals from a judgment of the trial court wherein the court concluded that the antenuptial agreement: (1) contained a valid choice of law provision specifying that the agreement was to be interpreted according to New York law; and (2) is valid and enforceable under New York law. We affirm the judgment of the trial court.

The relevant factual and procedural history is as follows. The plaintiff and the decedent were married in 1988. Prior to their marriage, they had executed an antenuptial agreement wherein each party had waived his or her rights to the other's property in the event of death or divorce. ¹ In 1990, the decedent died intestate. There were no children of the marriage. The decedent was survived by two adult children from a prior marriage, Marie Elgar Hopper and Eric Elgar, the defendant in the present action. The Westport Probate Court appointed the defendant as the administrator of his father's estate. Subsequently the antenuptial agreement was admitted to and approved by the Probate Court, ² and the plaintiff, pursuant to the agreement, was divested of her statutory share of the decedent's estate. ³ Thereafter, the plaintiff appealed the decree of the Probate Court to the Superior Court pursuant to General Statutes § 45a-186. ⁴

The case was referred to an attorney trial referee ⁵ who conducted a trial de novo. The referee made the following findings of fact and recommended judgment for the defendants. The plaintiff and the decedent were married in Westport on September 25, 1988, after having lived together for the previous four years. Both were experienced business people. During the month of July prior to their marriage, the decedent had told the plaintiff that he would require her to sign an antenuptial agreement before they could be married, to which she had responded "[f]orget about it."

On the morning of September 22, 1988, after the wedding date had been set for September 25, the invitations had been sent, and the acceptances had been received, the decedent informed the plaintiff that she was to sign an antenuptial agreement on the following day at the New York office of his lawyer, Stephen J. Corriss.

On September 23, 1988, the plaintiff saw the antenuptial agreement for the first time. Due to her immediate impending marriage and other events in her life, it was a busy day for the plaintiff and she had a lot on her mind. When she arrived at Corriss' office, however, she had already determined that she was going to sign the agreement and that she did not intend to read it. She testified that she understood the agreement to apply only in the event of divorce and had not considered that it would apply in the event of the decedent's death. Moreover, she believed that her refusal to sign the agreement would put her impending marriage in jeopardy. Furthermore, she testified that she would have signed the agreement regardless of its provisions. The night before she signed the agreement, two of the plaintiff's friends had told her that they did not like the fact that she was signing an agreement that she had not read, but she, nonetheless, simply flipped through the agreement quickly, stared at the pages rather than reading them, and signed the agreement.

Corriss hastily reviewed the agreement with the parties before they signed it and pointed out that it referred to events that would occur in the event of divorce, provided for waivers of rights against one another's estates, and contained a choice of law provision specifying that the agreement was being made pursuant to New York law and would be interpreted accordingly. Immediately before the agreement was signed, the parties wrote out financial disclosures, which were annexed to the agreement.

At the time the agreement was executed, the plaintiff was a lawful resident and domiciliary of New York and remained so following the marriage. Except for holidays, weekends, and summers in Westport, she resided in New York and educated her daughter from a previous marriage at a school in New York. The plaintiff had a New York driver's license and voted, filed tax returns and patronized a dentist in New York. She also owned a business in New York until 1990. Additionally, the plaintiff had bank accounts, credit cards and store charge cards, which she maintained at her New York address. Despite requests from the decedent, she did not wish to relocate herself and her daughter from New York to Connecticut.

The decedent considered himself to be a lawful resident and domiciliary of Connecticut, although he spent weekdays with the plaintiff in an apartment in New York and purchased an apartment in New York after their marriage in the name of a trust in order not to jeopardize his Connecticut residency for tax purposes. He also owned a business in New York and managed both his business and his personal affairs using a New York law firm.

All discussions between the decedent and his attorneys, and the limited discussions between the decedent and the plaintiff in connection with the antenuptial agreement, took place in New York. The antenuptial agreement was negotiated, discussed and executed in New York.

The trial referee found that in connection with the agreement, the plaintiff had not been represented by an attorney and that the opportunity provided to her to procure an attorney, one day during a busy time in her life, was not reasonable. The plaintiff saw the agreement for the first time in Corriss' office and, for all practical purposes, she did not read it. Although she had told Corriss that she had read it, despite having not done so, under the circumstances, Corriss knew that she was not represented by counsel and should have known that she had not carefully studied the agreement. Corriss knew that the manner in which the agreement was signed was not in conformity with the normal practices of his own office and, in fact, he had received a note from a colleague in which the colleague had stated that he was "distressed by the combination of no counsel and no financial disclosure."

The referee, however, further found that no false representations had been made to the plaintiff with regard to the contents of the agreement and that there was no proof of fraud, duress or undue influence in connection with its execution. ⁶ While the parties were neglectful in their rush to sign the agreement, the plaintiff had nevertheless wished to sign the agreement and to get on with her wedding and life regardless of what the agreement said. The plaintiff had told her friends that she had decided in advance to sign the agreement because it was what the decedent wanted, and she wanted to sign it to please him. In fact, the plaintiff produced no evidence that she would not have signed the agreement if she had realized that it had included disposition of the parties' estates upon their deaths.

On the basis of his factual findings, the referee concluded that under §§ 187 and 201 of the Restatement (Second) of Conflict of Laws (1971), ⁷ the parties' express choice of New York law was valid and, furthermore, that under New York law, the agreement was enforceable because the plaintiff had not met her burden of proving that the agreement had been the product of fraud. See In the Matter of Sunshine, 51 A.D.2d 326, 327-28, 381 N.Y.S.2d 260, aff'd, 40 N.Y.2d 875, 357 N.E.2d 999, 389 N.Y.S.2d 344 (1976) (New York rule places no special burden on party seeking to sustain antenuptial agreement). The referee submitted his report to the trial court and the trial court, having determined that the referee's findings of fact were supported by the evidence and that the conclusions drawn therefrom were legally and logically correct, accepted the recommendation and rendered judgment in favor of the defendant. The plaintiff appealed from the judgment of the trial court to the Appellate Court, and we transferred the appeal to this court pursuant to Practice Book § 4023 and General Statutes § 51-199(c). We affirm the judgment of the trial court.

The plaintiff makes the following claims on appeal: (1) the New York choice of law provision contained in the antenuptial agreement should not have been given effect because (a) it had been obtained by improper means and, alternatively, (b) to give effect to the provision would contravene a fundamental policy of the state that has a materially greater interest in the determination of the issue, namely, Connecticut; see 1 Restatement (Second), supra, § 187; (2) in the absence of an express choice of law by the parties, an application of the test set forth in the § 188 of the Restatement, ⁸ and the principles set forth in O'Connor v. O'Connor, 201 Conn. 632, 638, 519 A.2d 13 (1986), compels the conclusion that, because Connecticut has the most significant relationship to the parties and the antenuptial agreement, the agreement must be interpreted in accordance with Connecticut law, under which it is unenforceable; and (3) even if the New York choice of law provision is valid, the antenuptial agreement is unenforceable under New York law. We are not persuaded that the referee's finding that the parties' choice of New York law was valid is not supported by the record. ⁹ Furthermore, we agree with the referee and the...