Simeone v. Simeone

• Decision Date: 25 September 1990
• Parties: , 59 USLW 2253 Catherine E. Walsh SIMEONE, Appellant, v. Frederick A. SIMEONE, Appellee.
• Court: Pennsylvania Supreme Court

Page 162

581 A.2d 162

525 Pa. 392, 59 USLW 2253

Catherine E. Walsh SIMEONE, Appellant, v. Frederick A. SIMEONE, Appellee.

Supreme Court of Pennsylvania.

Argued Jan. 23, 1990.

Decided Sept. 25, 1990.

Leonard Dubin, George J. Krueger, Philadelphia, for appellant.

Albert Momjian, Philadelphia, Stewart B. Barmen, Pittsburgh, Jerold S. Berschler, Norristown, for: amicus--The American Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers, Pa. Chapter.

Robert I. Whitelaw, Philadelphia, for appellee.

Before NIX, C.J., and LARSEN, FLAHERTY, McDERMOTT, ZAPPALA, PAPADAKOS and CAPPY, JJ.

OPINION OF THE COURT

FLAHERTY ^*, Justice.

At issue in this appeal is the validity of a prenuptial agreement executed between the appellant, Catherine E. Walsh Simeone, and the appellee, Frederick A. Simeone. At the time of their marriage, in 1975, appellant was a twenty-three year old nurse and appellee was a thirty-nine year old neurosurgeon. Appellee had an income of approximately $90,000 per year, and appellant was unemployed. Appellee also had assets worth approximately $300,000. On the eve of the parties' wedding, appellee's attorney presented appellant with a prenuptial agreement to be signed. Appellant, without the benefit of counsel, signed the agreement. Appellee's attorney had not advised appellant regarding any legal rights that the agreement surrendered. The parties are in disagreement as to whether appellant knew in advance of that date that such an agreement would be presented for signature. Appellant denies having had such knowledge and claims to have signed under adverse circumstances, which, she contends, provide a basis for declaring it void.

The agreement limited appellant to support payments of $200 per week in the event of separation or divorce, subject to a maximum total payment of $25,000. The parties separated in 1982, and, in 1984, divorce proceedings were commenced. Between 1982 and 1984 appellee made payments which satisfied the $25,000 limit. In 1985, appellant filed a claim for alimony pendente lite. A master's report upheld the validity of the prenuptial agreement and denied this claim. Exceptions to the master's report were dismissed by the Court of Common Pleas of Philadelphia County. The Superior Court affirmed. Simeone v. Simeone, 380 Pa.Super. 37, 551 A.2d 219 (1988).

We granted allowance of appeal because uncertainty was expressed by the Superior Court regarding the meaning of our plurality decision in Estate of Geyer, 516 Pa. 492, 533 A.2d 423 (1987) (Opinion Announcing Judgment of the Court). The Superior Court viewed Geyer as permitting a prenuptial agreement to be upheld if it either made a reasonable provision for the spouse or was entered after a full and fair disclosure of the general financial positions of the parties and the statutory rights being relinquished. Appellant contends that this interpretation of Geyer is in error insofar as it requires disclosure of statutory rights only in cases where there has not been made a reasonable provision for the spouse. Inasmuch as the courts below held that the provision made for appellant was a reasonable one, appellant's efforts to overturn the agreement have focused upon an assertion that there was an inadequate disclosure of statutory rights. Appellant continues to assert, however, that the payments provided in the agreement were less than reasonable.

The statutory rights in question are those relating to alimony pendente lite. Other statutory rights, such as those pertaining to alimony and equitable distribution of marital property, did not exist in 1975. Those rights arose under the Divorce Code of 1980, and the Code expressly provides that marital agreements executed prior to its effective date are not affected thereby. 23 P.S. § 103. Certainly, at the time the present agreement was executed, no disclosure was required with respect to rights which were not then in existence. The present agreement did expressly state, however, that alimony pendente lite was being relinquished. It also recited that appellant "has been informed and understands" that, were it not for the agreement, appellant's obligation to pay alimony pendente lite "might, as a matter of law, exceed the amount provided." Hence, appellant's claim is not that the agreement failed to disclose the particular right affected, but rather that she was not adequately informed with respect to the nature of alimony pendente lite.

The plurality opinion in Geyer expressly applied and followed this Court's decision in Hillegass Estate, 431 Pa. 144, 244 A.2d 672 (1968), which held that a prenuptial agreement will be upheld if it either made a reasonable provision for the spouse or was entered after a full and fair disclosure of financial status. See Geyer, 516 Pa. at 502 n. 9, 533 A.2d at 427 n. 9. The concluding paragraph of the Geyer plurality opinion, however, injected a basis for uncertainty as to whether Hillegass was being strictly followed. It stated as follows:

[A]ny agreement which seeks to change the duly enacted public policy of this Commonwealth must be based on nothing less than full and fair disclosure. Such disclosure must include both the general financial pictures of the parties involved, and evidence that the parties are aware of the statutory rights which they are relinquishing.

516 Pa. at 506, 533 A.2d at 429-30 (emphasis added) (footnotes omitted).

The Superior Court attempted to reconcile this language with the earlier portion of Geyer which applied Hillegass and concluded that, viewed in context, this language meant that full and fair disclosure of financial positions and statutory rights was required only where the provisions made for a spouse were unreasonable. Because the Superior Court viewed the present agreement as having made an adequate provision for appellant, it held that the agreement was valid regardless of whether there had been a full disclosure of statutory rights being surrendered. The alternative, of course, would have been to require full and fair disclosure in every case, but such would plainly have been inconsistent with Hillegass, supra.

While the decision of the Superior Court reflects, perhaps, a reasonable interpretation of Geyer, we do not view this case as a vehicle to affirm that interpretation. Rather, there is need for a reexamination of the foundations upon which Geyer and earlier decisions rested, and a need for clarification of the standards by which the validity of prenuptial agreements will be judged.

There is no longer validity in the implicit presumption that supplied the basis for Geyer and similar earlier decisions. Such decisions rested upon a belief that spouses are of unequal status and that women are not knowledgeable enough to understand the nature of contracts that they enter. Society has advanced, however, to the point where women are no longer regarded as the "weaker" party in marriage, or in society generally. Indeed, the stereotype that women serve as homemakers while men work as breadwinners is no longer viable. Quite often today both spouses are income earners. Nor is there viability in the presumption that women are uninformed, uneducated, and readily subjected to unfair advantage in marital agreements. Indeed, women nowadays quite often have substantial education, financial awareness, income, and assets.

Accordingly, the law has advanced to recognize the equal status of men and women in our society. See, e.g., Pa. Const. art. 1, § 28 (constitutional prohibition of sex discrimination in laws of the Commonwealth). Paternalistic presumptions and protections that arose to shelter women from the inferiorities and incapacities which they were perceived as having in earlier times have, appropriately, been discarded. See Geyer, 516 Pa. at 509-14, 533 A.2d at 431-33 (dissenting opinion of Mr. Chief Justice Nix setting forth detailed history of case law evidencing a shift away from the former paternalistic approach of protecting women towards a newer approach of equal treatment). It would be inconsistent, therefore, to perpetuate the standards governing prenuptial agreements that were described in Geyer and similar decisions, as these reflected a paternalistic approach that is now insupportable.

Further, Geyer and its predecessors embodied substantial departures from traditional rules of contract law, to the extent that they allowed consideration of the knowledge of the contracting parties and reasonableness of their bargain as factors governing whether to uphold an agreement. Traditional principles of contract law provide perfectly adequate remedies where contracts are procured through fraud, misrepresentation, or duress. Consideration of other factors, such as the knowledge of the parties and the reasonableness of their bargain, is inappropriate. See Geyer, 516 Pa. at 516-17, 533 A.2d at 434-35 (Flaherty, J. dissenting). Prenuptial agreements are contracts, and, as such, should be evaluated under the same criteria as are applicable to other types of contracts. See Geyer, 516 Pa. at 508, 533 A.2d at 431 ("These agreements are nothing more than contracts and should be treated as such." (Nix, C.J. dissenting)). Absent fraud, misrepresentation, or duress, spouses should be bound by the terms of their agreements.

Contracting parties are normally bound by their agreements, without regard to whether the terms thereof were read and fully understood and irrespective of whether the agreements embodied reasonable or good bargains. See Standard Venetian Blind Co. v. American Empire Insurance Co., 503 Pa. 300, 305, 469 A.2d 563, 566 (1983) (failure to read a contract does not warrant avoidance or nullification of its provisions); Estate of Brant, 463 Pa. 230, 235, 344 A.2d 806, 809 (1975); Bollinger v. Central Pennsylvania Quarry Stripping & Construction Co., 425 Pa. 430, 432, 229 A.2d 741, 742 (1967) ("Once a person enters into a written agreement he builds around himself a stone wall, from which he cannot escape by merely asserting...