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REOPENING THE JUDGMENT - DURESS CLAIM BASED ON BATTERED SPOUSE SYNDROME
© 1994 National Legal Research Group, Inc.
CONNECTICUT: Jenks v. Jenks, 34 Conn. App. 462, 642 A.2d 31 (1994).
Wife's assertion that she suffered from battered spouse syndrome did not constitute duress or undue influence so as to justify reopening dissolution judgment based on parties' written stipulation, where husband's alleged acts were not contemporaneous with the execution of the agreement and wife was represented by counsel during the negotiations.
The court in this case rejected the notion that a wife can raise a claim of duress to attack a contractually based divorce judgment on the ground of "battered spouse syndrome," if the wife was represented by counsel and no contact took place between the parties during the settlement negotiations. The policy of encouraging private settlement of litigants' financial affairs weighs against allowing such a postjudgment attack, the court said.
During the parties' dissolution proceedings, they appeared for a pretrial conference, and their negotiations culminated in a signed, written stipulation. On that same day, the stipulation was submitted to and approved by the trial court, which ordered the stipulation incorporated into the dissolution decree.
Six weeks later, the wife, through new counsel, filed a motion to open the judgment, alleging that she was a long-term emotionally battered spouse who was on medication for stress and anxiety, that she had entered into the stipulation under extreme emotional duress caused by both the long-term emotional abuse as well as the circumstances of negotiations in the courtroom, that she had been unable to make a meaningful decision, and that the stipulation was entered into as a result of undue influence.
Following an evidentiary hearing, a judge - not the one who had approved the stipulation - granted the motion, stating that the agreement was the product of duress given the history of ultimatums that preceded the pretrial conference. The Connecticut appeals court reversed and reinstated the judgment that incorporated the stipulation, after an extended discussion of duress and the policy considerations at stake.
The classical or common law definition of duress is "`any wrongful act of one person that compels a manifestation of apparent assent by another to a transaction without his volition,'" the court said, quoting 25 Am. Jur. 2d "Duress and Undue Influence" S. 1 (1966). Jenks v. Jenks, supra , 642 A.2d at 33. The duress must be imposed at or about the time of the disputed transaction, the court said, citing 25 Am. Jur. 2d, supra , S. 14, and Shlensky v. Shlensky , 369 Ill. 179, 15 N.E.2d 694 (1938). Jenks v. Jenks, supra , 642 A.2d at 33.
The court noted that common law or classical duress was narrowly construed and required acts that were sufficient to overcome the mind and will of a person of ordinary firmness. However, there has been a gradual relaxation of these rules, and, under the modern doctrine, the pressure applied does not have to be such as to overcome the will of a person of ordinary firmness but is sufficient if it in fact overcomes the will of the person against whom it is applied, the court said. "Under the modern rule we look to the effect of the wrongful acts on a particular person rather than to the hypothetical effect on a person of ordinary firmness," the court said. Jenks v. Jenks, supra , 642 A.2d at 33.
In this case, the court observed, the parties had little or no contact with each other for more than a month prior to the dissolution. On the day when they entered into the stipulation, they arrived at court separately and remained in different areas of the courthouse while their attorneys acted as intermediaries. There was no evidence of any duress remotely contemporaneous with the execution of the agreement, the court concluded.
The wife grounded her duress argument on battered spouse syndrome, "which is a recently recognized diagnosis of the condition that results from a person's living in a situation in which he or she is constantly abused verbally, criticized, abused sexually and beaten. Such conditions promote great anxiety and usually dependence." Jenks v. Jenks, supra , 642 A.2d at 34. In effect, the court noted, the wife was arguing that duress at any time during the marriage that affected her power to exercise her free will would be sufficient to warrant opening the judgment.
But this argument, if accepted, would drastically discourage the settlement of dissolution cases by agreement, the court said. "We are not willing to destroy our policy of encouraging negotiated settlements." Id. Since the record did not show that the wife gave any indication of her unhappiness to the judge who canvassed the parties about the assent to the agreement, the finding below that the agreement resulted from duress did not have any factual predicate. And the fact that the wife was represented by counsel during the negotiations that ripened into the agreement and was present at its execution militated against a conclusion that she was acting under duress and not exercising her own free will, the court said.
The court conceded that the husband's allegedly abusive conduct took place during the marriage and undoubtedly contributed materially to the breakdown of the marriage. But in family relations cases, the court observed, it is common that the parties come to the tribunal with a history of emotional turbulence. "Stress and anxiety are frequent companions of predissolution negotiations," it noted. Jenks v. Jenks , 642 A.2d at 35.
The court emphasized that the law encourages private settlement of the financial affairs of litigants. "If we sanction the opening of a judgment for predissolution conduct, without evidence of a nexus between that conduct and the dissolution agreement, we cast doubt on all contractually based dissolution judgments. All judgments rendered on settlement agreements would be subject to undoing by a party seeking a second bite at the apple. This is contrary to the law's interest in finality of judgments." Id.
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