Wright v. Wright

• Decision Date: 22 April 2008
• Docket Number: Docket No. 281918.
• Citation: 279 Mich. App. 291,761 N.W.2d 443
• Parties: WRIGHT v. WRIGHT.
• Court: Court of Appeal of Michigan — District of US

761 N.W.2d 443

279 Mich. App. 291

WRIGHT v. WRIGHT.

Docket No. 281918.

Court of Appeals of Michigan.

Submitted April 8, 2008, at Detroit.

Decided April 22, 2008.

Approved for Publication June 3, 2008 at 9:10 a.m.

Benjamin Whitfield, Jr. & Associates, PC (by Benjamin Whitfield, Jr., and Cynthia J. Gaither) for the plaintiff.

Reed Law Group, P.C. (by Steven A. Reed) for the defendant.

Before: O'CONNELL, P.J., and BORRELLO and GLEICHER, JJ.

PER CURIAM.

Plaintiff appeals as of right the trial court's order dividing the parties' marital property contrary to a postnuptial contract, granting defendant legal and physical custody of the parties' three minor children, and ordering plaintiff to pay child support, alimony, and defendant's attorney fees. We affirm.

Plaintiff first met defendant when she was working as a cashier at a fast-food restaurant. She was a 17-year-old high-school student and single mother of a male toddler, Anthony, and an infant daughter, Janae (born June 5, 1994), from a different relationship. Plaintiff was a corrections officer with a house, a solid career, and no children. He was 10 years older than defendant and had recently divorced his second wife. The couple started seeing each other, and when defendant turned 18 years old, she moved in with plaintiff. She did not graduate from high school and had never lived outside her parent's home. The couple and defendant's children spent the next year living together at plaintiff's house on Rosewood in Inkster, and defendant gave birth to plaintiff's son, Charles Tyler, on March 1, 1996. About five months later, the couple was married in an informal ceremony in Toledo. Defendant went back to school and obtained her GED (general equivalency diploma), but it was clear that plaintiff was the family's breadwinner. He brought substantial assets into the marriage, including savings, investment properties, and the Rosewood house. Defendant did not bring any assets into the marriage. Plaintiff worked a substantial amount of overtime, and defendant managed the household.

In 1998, the couple sold the Rosewood house and plaintiff put a substantial amount of the proceeds into buying the family a new house on Thornhill in Ypsilanti Township, which was deeded to the parties in both their names. Around this time, plaintiff adopted Janae as his daughter. Although Anthony also lived with them, plaintiff had a much more contentious relationship with the boy, who was older and retained ties with his biological father and the paternal side of his family. In 2001, plaintiff and defendant decided that it would be a good idea for defendant to run a day-care operation at the Thornhill house. Plaintiff undertook an expensive renovation of the home to make it functional, and defendant received her license in 2002.

Also in 2002, Anthony confessed to his mother that he had touched Janae inappropriately. Needless to say, the ensuing ordeal strained Anthony's relationship with plaintiff even more, and defendant initially thought it might be best for all involved if she simply reported the incident to the authorities so Anthony and Janae could get some professional help. The couple decided, instead, that they would monitor the children closely and deal with the problem without involving the authorities. On October 4, 2003, defendant gave birth to the parties' youngest daughter, Emma. In 2004, plaintiff went back to college to obtain his MBA (master's degree in business administration). At some point during the marriage, he also started a side business as a private investigator. Defendant, too, went back to school, and entered a nursing program at a local community college. However, tensions again mounted between Anthony and plaintiff, and by mid-2004, plaintiff gave defendant the option of sending Anthony to live with his biological father or reporting his improper conduct toward Janae to the authorities. Anthony moved out on July 2, 2004.

About one year later, the marriage was under strain. Although the parties were not separated, plaintiff had his attorney draw up a postnuptial agreement that protected all his rights to his premarital property, his retirement accounts, the marital home, and every other article of marital property requiring a substantial financial investment from him. In the attachments listing the specified properties that the parties claimed and would retain as their own separate property, plaintiff listed his retirement accounts, his vacant lots, and any property "purchased after the marriage for which I paid more than 90% of the purchase price." The agreement provided that it would supplant any property settlement or distribution that would ordinarily follow from one of the parties obtaining a divorce or dying, and it specifically provided that the parties knew that their respective financial positions would be worse because of the agreement but that their love for one another surpassed material concerns. Defendant signed the agreement on July 29, 2005. About eight months later, plaintiff filed for divorce. He did not first separate from defendant or leave the marital home, and he did not even tell defendant that he had filed for divorce; instead, defendant was informed by an unfamiliar attorney who discovered the divorce in the court records and blindly offered to represent her.

Plaintiff remained in the Thornhill house and obtained a temporary order to maintain the status quo of joint custody for the children, just as his attorney had requested. He began taking candid photographs of defendant and her day-care business, and, unbeknownst to defendant, he also began secretly recording defendant's actions and the day care's activities. On the basis of what he recorded, he filed several complaints with Children's Protective Services and defendant's licensing bureau. Plaintiff also started becoming intensely involved in therapy for Charles Tyler and Janae. The children's therapist testified that the children would often tell her "bad" things about their mother that their father had told them to tell her. Plaintiff would later ask the therapist if she would report the matters to Children's Protective Services. The therapist never felt obliged to report any of the incidents. Plaintiff also called the sheriff's department to report statements Janae had made about a physical altercation between Janae and her mother. Interestingly, this report arose on the same day that the trial court ordered plaintiff to move out of the Thornhill home. Two days before trial, plaintiff took Charles Tyler and Janae to two different hospitals, raising allegations that the children had told them that defendant had been neglecting them. Again, he asked hospital staff to file a report with Children's Protective Services on the matter. Plaintiff failed to demonstrate at trial that any of these reported incidents, when removed from the glare of his blatant exaggeration, were nearly as severe as he originally made them out to be.

Against this backdrop, the trial court heard evidence that an anonymous tipster telephoned Children's Protective Services in late May 2006 and informed case workers that Anthony had inappropriately touched Janae. The report came four years after the alleged contact had occurred, two years after Anthony had been totally removed from Janae's household, and about two months after plaintiff had filed for divorce. Nothing in the record indicated that Anthony had gotten into any further trouble since he left plaintiff's household. The trial court reasonably inferred, without a hint of clear error, that plaintiff was responsible for informing the authorities, contrary to his previous arrangement with defendant. Of course, the matter was investigated, and Anthony was prosecuted, but the incident destroyed plaintiff's credibility as a caring father who was solely looking out for his children's best interests. He never reestablished the tremendous loss to his credibility. The trial court found, on the basis of strong supporting evidence, that plaintiff did not zealously pursue custody, closely monitor defendant, and scrupulously report defendant's most minor transgressions because of any paternal assiduousness, but because he wanted to hurt and defeat defendant. Certainly, his instigation of confrontation in the marital home, his alteration of the children's school arrangements for the sake of investigatory interviews, and his injection of rancorous griping against defendant in the children's therapy sessions all support the inference that plaintiff was willing to sacrifice the children's stability and well-being so that he might obtain a tactical advantage in the divorce litigation.

Ultimately, the trial court's poor opinion of plaintiff's veracity adversely affected its assessment of him under the best-interest factors, and the trial court granted defendant sole legal and primary physical custody of the children. Having set aside the postnuptial agreement as void, the trial court divided the marital property fairly evenly and ordered plaintiff to pay defendant child support, spousal support, and her attorney fees.

Plaintiff first argues that the trial court erred by declaring the postnuptial agreement void. We disagree. This Court reviews de novo a trial court's interpretation of a contract and its resolution of any legal questions that affect a contract's validity, but any factual questions regarding the validity of the contract's formation are reviewed for clear error. 46th Circuit Trial Court v. Crawford Co., 476 Mich. 131, 157, 719 N.W.2d 553 (2006). Although plaintiff goes to great lengths to demonstrate how the parties consented to the agreement, under Michigan law, a couple that is maintaining a marital relationship may not enter into an enforceable contract that anticipates and encourages a future separation or divorce. Day v. Chamberlain, 223 Mich. 278, 193 N.W. 824 (1923). As our Supreme Court stated in Randall v. Randall, 37 Mich. 563, 571 (...