A parade of prominent divorce attorneys is marching to Manhattan court to challenge prenuptial agreements — spurred on by an unprecedented decision that voided a Nassau County couple’s contract.
In February, an appeals court voided Elizabeth Petrakis’ 1998 agreement with her husband, Peter, a real-estate developer worth $20 million, because he had falsely promised to rip up the contract after they had kids.
He also pressured his bride to sign the document on the eve of the wedding, the court found.
Lawyer Marilyn Chinitz, who represented Tom Cruise in his split from Katie Holmes, recently got a letter from an opposing attorney saying his client was going to challenge his prenup. “It was almost as if they took the language from Petrakis and plopped it in the letter,” Chinitz said.
Chinitz’s current client, the wife, is married without children and had inherited a chunk of cash.
The Petrakis decision has sent shock waves throughout the matrimonial-law landscape.
Robert Wallack, Christie Brinkley’s divorce attorney, has been in the business for 40 years and only recently fought a challenge to a prenup from the estranged wife of a wealthy client.
“I think many, many unhappy people with prenups are going to seize upon Petrakis as a sea change in the way courts look at these agreements,” Wallack said.
Martha Cohen Stine, a prominent family law attorney won an extremely rare victory against a postnuptial agreement before Petrakis because the wife claimed she would commit suicide if the husband didn’t sign it.
The judge found the agreement was a product of “duress” and thus invalid.
But in a current case a Manhattan judge declined to follow the Petrakis decision and upheld the prenup, even though the wife, like the Long Island woman, was presented with the agreement just a few weeks before the wedding and had signed it under a mountain of pressure.
“In Petrakis there was extensive testimony which showed the husband had acted in bad faith and had perpetrated a deliberate fraud on his fiancée,” she noted.
Still, Stine said, Petrakis “is a cookbook of what not to do when your client is the one who wants the agreement” and presents a “precautionary tale.”