People may sign marital agreements for a variety of reasons and Florida law allows premarital, postmarital and marital settlement agreements so long as they meet legal requirements. Overarching all contracts and marital contracts in particular is that to be fair, people should understand what they are agreeing to in order to prevent gross unfairness.
In prenuptial agreements (prenups), state statute emphasizes this fairness requirement since a spouse can sign away significant property and financial interests they would otherwise have in case of divorce.
Conditions that make a prenup unenforceable
If a prenup is written in English and one of the spouses is not fluent in it, it could become unenforceable based on this factor. Since the future spouse does not understand what they are signing based on language barrier, a court could find this as involuntary execution.
Two other conditions may include:
- The agreement resulted from “fraud, duress, coercion or overreaching”
- The agreement was unconscionable and the party challenging the agreement did not get “fair and reasonable” disclosure of the assets and debts of the other party, did not voluntarily in writing waive the right to that disclosure beyond what was actually disclosed, and could not have had “adequate knowledge” of those assets and debts
Examples from real cases
Courts find marital agreements unenforceable when there has been no translation for a party who does not speak English, in combination with other unfair circumstances:
- A New York referee invalidated a prenup in German where the wife had signed without a translation in reliance on her fiancé and his parents telling her it only limited her rights to the parents’ assets. The truth however, was that it placed her husband’s millions of dollars in assets out of reach, according to the New York Post.
- In a South Carolina case, a court found a prenup was unenforceable because it was executed under duress where the Ukrainian wife had not understood the agreement in English and could not afford to hire a translator or lawyer. She was also pregnant and under threat of deportation from the U.S. Her husband told her she must sign their prenup if she wanted to get married before her visa expired.
- A Tennessee court found a prenup unenforceable because the husband presented it in English to his Spanish wife just before their wedding. She had no access to a proper translator and instead, asked the help of a 16-year-old for translation. However, the document was not fully or fluently translated.
Similar standards would apply to postnuptial agreements and marital settlement agreements that were created in contemplation of divorce. In one Florida case, the standard set out for setting aside a marital settlement agreement was to prove it was entered with reliance on fraudulent, misrepresented information or through coercion.
Providing foreign partners with a professional translation of any proposed agreements can help ensure a fair agreement from both parties. Otherwise, the signed agreement is likely to be the subject of dispute at a later time.
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