MAZOUR VS. MAZOUR (DIVORCE PROPERTY & ALIMONY)

Key holdings

Practitioner summary

Appeal from a judgment sustaining a general demurrer to, and dismissing, a separate equity action seeking to cancel for fraud, duress, and undue influence a property-settlement agreement that had been ratified, approved, and confirmed in the parties' 1944 divorce decree. Held: relief from a divorce decree (or a settlement merged into it) for fraud requires extrinsic, not intrinsic, fraud. Following Calvert v. Calvert, 61 Nev. 168, 122 P.2d 426; Confer v. Second Judicial District Court, 49 Nev. 18, 234 P. 688; and Chamblin v. Chamblin, 55 Nev. 146, 27 P.2d 1061, and the California rule in Hendricks v. Hendricks, 216 Cal. 321, 14 P.2d 83, fraud is intrinsic where the complaining spouse had the opportunity to consult counsel of her own choosing and to present the matter to the court during the pendency of the action. Appellant's allegation that fear of the respondent prevented her from disclosing the coercion to her own counsel did not reclassify the fraud as extrinsic. The adjudication of the parties' property rights was as much an issue in the divorce as the dissolution and custody questions, so the alleged fraud went to a matter actually adjudicated. The demurrer was properly sustained, and it was unnecessary to pass on the order striking papers from the proposed bill of exceptions. Affirmed with costs, and the funds on deposit ordered paid to respondent with interest.

In plain language

A wife obtained a divorce and, in that same divorce case, the court approved a property settlement under which she gave up her share of community property worth roughly $7,500. About a year and a half later she filed a new lawsuit to cancel that settlement, claiming her husband had forced her into the divorce and the settlement through cruelty, duress, and undue influence. The trial court dismissed her new suit (it sustained a demurrer), and she appealed. The Nevada Supreme Court affirmed. It explained that to reopen a divorce decree, or a settlement approved in it, for fraud, the fraud must be "extrinsic" - something that prevented a party from presenting her case - rather than "intrinsic," which goes to matters actually litigated. Because the wife had her own attorney of her own choosing and had the chance to raise the alleged coercion at the divorce trial, any fraud was intrinsic. Her argument that fear of her husband kept her from telling her lawyer the truth did not change the result. The court also held that the division of property was as much an issue in the divorce as the divorce itself. The judgment was affirmed, and the $6,000 the wife had deposited with the court was ordered paid to the husband, with interest.