Court Opinion

ID: 9711662
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 04:36:23.425952+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:06:35.246675
License: Public Domain

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 *397Superior 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 *398adequately 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. *399Rather, 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 *400of 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 he had not understood what he was signing.”); Montgomery v. Levy, 406 Pa. 547, 550, 177 A.2d 448, 450 (1962) (one is legally bound to know the terms of the contract entered). Based upon these principles, the terms of the present prenuptial agreement must be regarded as binding, without regard to whether the terms were fully understood by appellant. Ignorantia non excusat.
Accordingly, we find no merit in a contention raised by appellant that the agreement should be declared *401void on the ground that she did not consult with independent legal counsel. To impose a per se requirement that parties entering a prenuptial agreement must obtain independent legal counsel would be contrary to traditional principles of contract law, and would constitute a paternalistic and unwarranted interference with the parties’ freedom to enter contracts.
Further, the reasonableness of a prenuptial bargain is not a proper subject for judicial review. Geyer and earlier decisions required that, at least where there had been an inadequate disclosure made by the parties, the bargain must have been reasonable at its inception. See Geyer, 516 Pa. at 503, 533 A.2d at 428. Some have even suggested that prenuptial agreements should be examined with regard to whether their terms remain reasonable at the time of dissolution of the parties’ marriage.
By invoking inquiries into reasonableness, however, the functioning and reliability of prenuptial agreements is severely undermined. Parties would not have entered such agreements, and, indeed, might not have entered their marriages, if they did not expect their agreements to be strictly enforced. If parties viewed an agreement as reasonable at the time of its inception, as evidenced by their having signed the agreement, they should be foreclosed from later trying to evade its terms by asserting that it was not in fact reasonable. Pertinently, the present agreement contained a clause reciting that “each of the parties considers this agreement fair, just and reasonable____”
Further, everyone who enters a long-term agreement knows that circumstances can change during its term, so that what initially appeared desirable might prove to be an unfavorable bargain. Such are the risks that contracting parties routinely assume. Certainly, the possibilities of illness, birth of children, reliance upon a spouse, career change, financial gain or loss, and numerous other events that can occur in the course of a marriage cannot be regarded as unforeseeable. If parties choose not to address *402such matters in their prenuptial agreements, they must be regarded as having contracted to bear the risk of events that alter the value of their bargains.
We are reluctant to interfere with the power of persons contemplating marriage to agree upon, and to act in reliance upon, what they regard as an acceptable distribution scheme for their property. A court should not ignore the parties’ expressed intent by proceeding to determine whether a prenuptial agreement was, in the court’s view, reasonable at the time of its inception or the time of divorce. These are exactly the sorts of judicial determinations that such agreements are designed to avoid. Rare indeed is the agreement that is beyond possible challenge when reasonableness is placed at issue. Parties can routinely assert some lack of fairness relating to the inception of the agreement, thereby placing the validity of the agreement at risk. And if reasonableness at the time of divorce were to be taken into account an additional problem would arise. Virtually nonexistent is the marriage in which there has been absolutely no change in the circumstances of either spouse during the course of the marriage. Every change in circumstance, foreseeable or not, and substantial or not, might be asserted as a basis for finding that an agreement is no longer reasonable.
In discarding the approach of Geyer that permitted examination of the reasonableness of prenuptial agreements and allowed inquiries into whether parties had attained informed understandings of the rights they were surrendering, we do not depart from the longstanding principle that a full and fair disclosure of the financial positions of the parties is required. Absent this disclosure, a material misrepresentation in the inducement for entering a prenuptial agreement may be asserted. Hillegass, 431 Pa. at 152-53, 244 A.2d at 676-77. Parties to these agreements do not quite deal at arm’s length, but rather at the time the contract is entered into stand in a relation of mutual confidence and trust that calls for disclosure of their financial resources. Id., 431 Pa. at 149, 244 A.2d at 675; Gelb *403Estate, 425 Pa. 117, 120, 228 A.2d 367, 369 (1967). It is well settled that this disclosure need not be exact, so long as it is “full and fair.” Kaufmann Estate, 404 Pa. 131, 136 n. 8, 171 A.2d 48, 51 n. 8 (1961). In essence therefore, the duty of disclosure under these circumstances is consistent with traditional principles of contract Haw.
If an agreement provides that full disclosure has been made, a presumption of full disclosure arises. If a spouse attempts to rebut this presumption through an assertion of fraud or misrepresentation then this presumption can be rebutted if it is proven by clear and convincing evidence. Hillegass, 431 Pa. at 152-53, 244 A.2d at 676-77.
The present agreement recited that full disclosure had been made, and included a list of appellee’s assets totalling approximately $300,000. Appellant contends that this list understated by roughly $183,000 the value of a classic car collection which appellee had included at a value of $200,-000. The master, reviewing the parties’ conflicting testimony regarding the value of the car collection, found that appellant failed to prove by clear and convincing evidence that the value of the collection had been understated. The courts below affirmed that finding. We have examined the record and find ample basis for concluding that the value of the car collection was fully disclosed. Appellee offered expert witnesses who testified to a value of approximately $200,000. Further, appellee’s disclosure included numerous cars that appellee did not even own but which he merely hoped to inherit from his mother at some time in the future. Appellant’s contention is plainly without merit.
Appellant’s final contention is that the agreement was executed under conditions of duress in that it was presented to her at 5 p.m. on the eve of her wedding, a time when she could not seek counsel without the trauma, expense, and embarrassment of postponing the wedding. The master found this claim not credible. The courts below affirmed that finding, upon an ample evidentiary basis.
*404Although appellant testified that she did not discover until the eve of her wedding that there was going to be a prenuptial agreement, testimony from a number of other witnesses was to the contrary. Appellee testified that, although the final version of the agreement was indeed presented to appellant on the eve of the wedding, he had engaged in several discussions with appellant regarding the contents of the agreement during the six month period preceding that date. Another witness testified that appellant mentioned, approximately two or three weeks before the wedding, that she was going to enter a prenuptial agreement. Yet another witness confirmed that, during the months preceding the wedding, appellant participated in several discussions of prenuptial agreements. And the legal counsel who prepared the agreement for appellee testified that, prior to the eve of the wedding, changes were made in the agreement to increase the sums payable to appellant in the event of separation or divorce. He also stated that he was present when the agreement was signed and that appellant expressed absolutely no reluctance about signing. It should be noted, too, that during the months when the agreement was being discussed appellant had more than sufficient time to consult with independent legal counsel if she had so desired. See generally Carrier v. William Penn Broadcasting Corp., 426 Pa. 427, 431, 233 A.2d 519, 521 (1967) (concept of duress as applied to contracting parties). Under these circumstances, there was plainly no error in finding that appellant failed to prove duress.
Hence, the courts below properly held that the present agreement is valid and enforceable. Appellant is barred, therefore, from receiving alimony pendente lite.
Order affirmed.
PAPADAKOS, J., files a concurring opinion.
McDERMOTT files a dissenting opinion which is joined by LARSEN, J.

 This case was reassigned to this writer.