New York Law Journal, February 14, 2025 —
When you utter the words “prenuptial agreement” to a matrimonial lawyer, more often than not you might instantly feel a sense of dread in the air. Some matrimonial lawyers are so adverse to prenuptial agreements that they tell me “I won’t do them anymore”. Other matrimonial lawyers I talk to say that prenuptial agreements should be banned altogether.
Alas, prenuptial agreements remain alive and well in New York, and so we, as matrimonial lawyers, must confront their ever-present complexities.
With that in mind, we turn to the critically important decision of Justice Jeffrey S. Sunshine in J.M. v. G.V., 2025 NY Slip Op 25004 (Kings Cty., January 2, 2025).
In J.M., the parties married in New York on May 23, 2018. One week prior, on May 16, 2018, the parties entered into a prenuptial agreement. The parties had one unemancipated child, born in September 2020. After the plaintiff-wife commenced an action for divorce, the defendant-husband moved for summary judgment to, inter alia, set aside the prenuptial agreement on the basis that the agreement “is unconscionable, fraudulent, and/or the result of overreaching”.
The husband was not represented by counsel during the negotiation and consummation of the prenuptial agreement. He asserted that the wife informed him that “if he wanted to marry her it was required by her family that he signed a prenuptial agreement.” According to the husband, when the prenuptial agreement was signed, the husband had a net worth of $27,000, and the wife had a net worth of over $455,000.
While the focus of this article will be spousal support waivers in prenuptial agreements, there are a multitude of important legal concepts that can be learned from reading the J.M. decision.