Court Opinion

ID: 9929526
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2024-02-02 21:04:28.106033+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T10:27:12.738607
License: Public Domain

2024 IL App (1st) 230776-U

                                        No. 1-23-0776

                                 Order filed February 2, 2024

                                                                               FIFTH DIVISION

NOTICE: This order was filed under Supreme Court Rule 23 and is not precedent except in the
limited circumstances allowed under Rule 23(e)(1).

                                          IN THE
                               APPELLATE COURT OF ILLINOIS
                                 FIRST JUDICIAL DISTRICT

  IN RE ESTATE OF GEORGE                             )      Appeal from the
  GEORGACOPOULOS                                     )      Circuit Court of
                                                     )      Cook County.
  EUGENIA GEORGACOPOULOS,                            )
                                                     )      No. 2020 P 7326
        Plaintiff-Appellee,                          )
                                                     )      Honorable
  v.                                                 )      Daniel O. Tiernan,
                                                     )      Judge, presiding.
  KYRIAKI GEORGACOPOULOS,                            )
                                                     )
        Defendant-Appellant.                         )

       PRESIDING JUSTICE MITCHELL delivered the judgment of the court.
       Justice Mikva and Justice Navarro concurred in the judgment.

                                           ORDER

¶1     Held: The circuit court’s order appointing plaintiff as administrator of the decedent’s
       estate is affirmed where the antenuptial agreement between the defendant and the decedent
       is enforceable despite the decedent’s breach of a covenant in the agreement.

¶2     Defendant Kyriaki Georgacopoulos appeals the circuit court’s order appointing plaintiff

Eugenia Georgacopoulos as administrator of George Georgacopoulos’s estate. Defendant also

appeals the denial of her cross-petition to be appointed as administrator and to declare

unenforceable her antenuptial agreement with her late husband George Georgacopoulos. The chief
No. 1-23-0776

issue on appeal is whether the circuit court erred in enforcing the antenuptial agreement, which

provides that defendant and the decedent shall not participate in each other’s estates. For the

following reasons, we affirm.

¶3     Plaintiff Eugenia Georgacopoulos is the daughter of the decedent, George Georgacopoulos,

and his first wife. Defendant Kyriaki Georgacopoulos was the decedent’s second wife. In 1992,

defendant and the decedent entered into an antenuptial agreement. 1 The antenuptial agreement

contained the following language:

                “[Decedent] acknowledges that [defendant] has two (2) children from a prior

       marriage who are presently living with her, and [decedent] agrees that said children shall

       continue to reside with [defendant] in the marital home to be provided by [decedent], until

       said children are adults and/or are emancipated ***.”

The agreement also included each party’s waiver of any rights to participate in the other party’s

estate upon death:

                “This Agreement is intended by [decedent] and [defendant] as a mutual release of

       all right, title and interest which either would have or acquire in and to all of the real and

       personal property of the other during the lifetime or at the death of either of parties hereto,

       by virtue of the marriage that is contemplated between them under the laws of Illinois ***.”

Soon after the antenuptial agreement was signed by both parties, defendant and the decedent were

married in Greece. They remained married until the decedent passed away in August 2020.

       1
           The terms “antenuptial agreement,” “prenuptial agreement,” and “premarital agreement”
are, in legal parlance, used interchangeably.

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No. 1-23-0776

¶4     In December 2020, plaintiff initiated this action by filing a petition for letters of

administration, seeking to be appointed as administrator of the decedent’s estate. Defendant filed

a cross-petition, requesting that the circuit court instead appoint defendant as administrator of the

decedent’s estate and declare the antenuptial agreement unenforceable. Defendant argued that the

agreement should be held to be unenforceable because, among other reasons, the decedent

breached the agreement and did not allow defendant’s minor children to reside in the marital home.

On March 23, 2023, the circuit court concluded that the antenuptial agreement was enforceable,

denied defendant’s cross-petition, and appointed plaintiff as administrator of the estate. This timely

appeal followed. Ill. S. Ct. R. 304(b)(1) (eff. Mar. 8, 2016).

¶5     Defendant argues that the circuit court erred in enforcing the antenuptial agreement

because the decedent George Georgacopoulos breached the agreement when he requested that

defendant’s minor children leave the marital home. A circuit court’s factual finding will only be

reversed if is against the manifest weight of the evidence, but a circuit court’s legal conclusion is

reviewed de novo. Mathey ex rel. Mathey v. Country Mutual Insurance Co., 321 Ill. App. 3d 805,

815 (2001); DeStefano v. Farmers Automobile Insurance Ass'n, 2016 IL App (5th) 150325, ¶ 6.

¶6     The circuit court heard testimony from defendant that, after returning from the wedding in

Greece, she lived in the marital home with the decedent and her two minor children from her

previous marriage: Evangelos Pagunas Jr. and Elefteria Pagunas. Defendant testified that three

months later, the decedent told the children to move out of the house. The children moved into the

residence of defendant’s oldest son. Defendant continued to live in the marital home with the

decedent. Additionally, in his evidence deposition, Evangelos Pagunas Jr. testified that both he

and his sister lived at the decedent’s house for a “couple months” after the marriage, but they left

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No. 1-23-0776

after the decedent “told us a couple times to pack up our stuff and leave.” After hearing this

testimony, the circuit court nonetheless enforced the antenuptial agreement.

¶7     Defendant argues that since the decedent breached the antenuptial agreement, the entire

agreement is unenforceable, and she relies exclusively on Becker v. Becker, 241 Ill. 423 (1909).2

But the breach in Becker was to a condition precedent: the husband’s covenant to maintain a life

insurance policy was a condition precedent to the performance of the wife’s covenant, and because

the husband had failed to maintain the life insurance policy as promised, he could not enforce the

agreement to receive title to all the wife’s property after she had died. Id. at 432-33. The two

covenants were “mutual covenants and were dependent upon each other.” Id. at 431. A condition

precedent is a condition which must be performed by one party to an existing contract before the

other party is obligated to perform under that contract. Owen v. Village of Maywood, 2023 IL App

(1st) 220350, ¶ 26. When a contract contains an express condition precedent, strict compliance is

required, and the contract is not enforceable until the condition is performed. Id. In contrast, the

provision breached here was an independent contractual provision (not a condition precedent). See

Foreman State Trust & Savings Bank v. Tauber, 348 Ill. 280, 292-93 (1932) (holding that Becker

is inapplicable because the covenants in the antenuptial agreement were independent rather than

mutual and dependent covenants).

       2
          Prenuptial agreements executed after January 1, 1990 are governed by the Illinois
Uniform Prenuptial Agreement Act, which generally makes such agreements easier to form and to
enforce. See 750 ILCS 10/1, et seq. The parties here have offered no argument under the Act.

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No. 1-23-0776

¶8     Defendant contends that the circuit court made an unsupported factual finding that the

decedent had not breached the antenuptial agreement, but that is not accurate. 3 The circuit court

expressly declined to invalidate the agreement based on the decedent’s breach:

                “[H]er minor children were kicked out of her house 28 years ago, and for that entire

       time for those 28 years from that date until the decedent passed she did nothing to challenge

       that. *** She did nothing for 28 years. And then after the decedent dies, she comes in and

       wants to invalidate that.

                Now, I’m not sure why she did it that way, but in this Court’s mind that is not

       enough to invalidate a prenuptial agreement that was bargained in good faith while the

       decedent was alive, and he survived for 28 years after that. So she could have challenged

       it at any time during that time period. So to invalidate it based on that small alleged

       violation of the agreement, the Court’s not going to do that.”

¶9         The question is not whether George Georgacopoulos breached the antenuptial agreement

(clearly he did), but whether his breach was material. The rules governing contract interpretation

apply to antenuptial agreements. In re Marriage of Woodrum, 2018 IL App (3d) 170369, ¶ 108;

Kranzler v. Kranzler, 2018 IL App (1st) 171169, ¶ 39. Only a material breach of an agreement

will justify the nonenforcement of the entire agreement. Direct Auto Insurance Co. v. O'Neal, 2022

IL App (1st) 211568, ¶ 15 (“A breach is material when it is so substantial and fundamental as to

       3
          Some of the confusion stems from the circuit court’s comment on the quality of the
evidence introduced to establish the decedent’s breach and the weight that attaches to an evidence
deposition. (“The son is not here to testify, you know, a transcript is not as good as live testimony,
so I don’t know.”). An evidence deposition is trial testimony, see Ill. S. Ct. R. 212(b), and as juries
are routinely instructed, “[y]ou should give this testimony the same consideration you would give
it had the witness personally appeared in court.” Illinois Pattern Jury Instructions, Civil, No. 2.01
(Supp. 2020).

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No. 1-23-0776

defeat the objects of the parties in making the agreement or when the failure to perform renders

performance of the rest of the contract different in substance from the original agreement”)

(Internal quotation marks omitted.); Mohanty v. St. John Heart Clinic, S.C., 225 Ill. 2d 52, 70

(2006) (“Under general contract principles, a material breach of a contract provision by one party

may be grounds for releasing the other party from his contractual obligations.”).

¶ 10   The fact that defendant waited 28 years before raising the decedent’s breach was paramount

in the circuit court’s conclusion that the breach was immaterial. The determination of whether a

breach is material is a complex question of fact that depends on a variety of factors including the

“inherent justice of the matter” and prejudice to the nonbreaching party. Wolfram Partnership,

Ltd. v. LaSalle National Bank, 328 Ill. App. 3d 207, 223 (2001); O’Neal, 2022 IL App (1st)

211568, ¶ 15. The analysis turns on whether the breach was so significant as to defeat the

bargained-for objectives of the parties. O’Neal, 2022 IL App (1st) 211568, ¶ 15. The antenuptial

agreement here gives us guidance as to the significance of the breach: the agreement expressly

provides that the decedent has “no legal obligation to provide any support or maintenance” for

defendant’s children, and that “any contribution made by [decedent] towards the cost of providing

adequate housing and support for [defendant’s children] shall be wholely [sic] voluntary on his

part.” This language supports the conclusion that the decedent’s support for defendant’s children

was not a fundamental objective of the parties when drafting the terms of the agreement.

¶ 11   Against this backdrop, the law and the evidence support the circuit court’s conclusion that

the decedent’s “small alleged violation” nearly 30 years ago was an insufficient basis to invalidate

the entire antenuptial agreement. See In re Marriage of Byrne, 179 Ill. App. 3d 944, 950 (1989)

(holding that the delay in claiming breach undermined the wife’s effort to invalidate the antenuptial

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No. 1-23-0776

agreement because the “time for her to have acted was *** during the marriage, not after.”);

Genung v. Hagemann, 103 Ill. App. 2d 409, 417-18 (1968) (holding that even though the decedent

husband breached the antenuptial agreement by failing to make the wife the beneficiary of an

insurance policy, the agreement was still enforceable, and the wife was barred under the terms of

the agreement from taking her share of the husband’s estate).

¶ 12   Under the Probate Act of 1975, a surviving spouse is entitled to preference in obtaining the

issuance of letters of administration. 755 ILCS 5/9-3 (West 2022). However, in the antenuptial

agreement, defendant waived any right to participate in the decedent’s estate. See 750 ILCS

10/4(a)(3) (West 2022). Since the antenuptial agreement is enforceable, the circuit court did not

err in appointing plaintiff as administrator of the decedent’s estate.

¶ 13   The judgement of the circuit court of Cook County is affirmed.

¶ 14   Affirmed.

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