The bedrock of prenuptial agreements and marital settlement agreements in family law is the full and fair financial disclosure provided by each party. The seminal case regarding the issue of disclosure is Simeone v. Simeone, 581 A.2d 162 (Pa. 1990). The recent case of Zabrosky v. Smithhower-Zabrosky, 273 A.3d 1108 (Pa. Super. 2022), addresses a number of interesting issues pertaining to marital settlement agreements.

In Zabrosky, the parties entered into a marital settlement agreement referred to in the case as a “marriage settlement agreement” where under its terms, the husband “represented that he made a full and fair disclosure of his assets, and he further agreed not to remove money from the accounts set aside for the children’s post-secondary education.” Thereafter, the wife filed a “petition for contempt, to compel, and for sanctions.” In the wife’s petition, she alleged that the husband violated the terms of the agreement “when he withdrew tens of thousands of dollars from the accounts to finance his divorce and custody litigation.” The trial court found the husband in contempt and awarded the wife the amount that the husband withdrew plus “interest,” $300 in counsel fees, and converted the award to the husband’s child support obligation and attached various purge conditions. The Superior Court affirmed, in part, and reversed, in part, the trial court’s decision.

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