Guthrie v. Guthrie

The appellee, Sandra Guthrie, and the decedent, Dallis Guthrie, were married in February 1998. Ms. Guthrie initiated divorce proceedings in April of 2000, and the parties participated in mediation ordered by the trial court. As a result of the mediation, the Guthries executed a settlement agreement, signed by the parties and their attorneys. Before the divorce court’s consideration of the agreement, Dallis obtained new counsel, renounced the agreement, and moved to set it aside. Dallis died before the divorce court had an opportunity to rule on the agreement or enter a decree of divorce. Thereafter, on motion by Dallis’s attorney, the unadjudicated divorce proceeding was dismissed.1 The executors of Dallis’s estate admitted his will to probate in Fulton County. Ms. Guthrie, in turn, brought the instant action in Fulton Superior Court to enforce the mediated settlement agreement. The executors answered, asserting that the agreement was unenforceable due to lack of consideration and thereafter filed a motion for summary judgment. In granting summary judgment to the executors, the trial court pronounced that it was acting in the nature of a divorce court in reviewing the settlement agreement and, relying upon Mathes v. Mathes 2 and other cases, the trial court exercised its discretion to reject the agreement and to grant summary judgment to the executors. The Court of Appeals disagreed and in Guthrie v. Guthrie ,3 reversed the trial court, finding that the court was only authorized to treat the matter before it as a contractual dispute, not a divorce case, and that it was error to summarily reject an otherwise valid contract because it arose out of a divorce proceeding. The Court of Appeals further determined that jury issues remained on the disputed issues of the decedent’s mental capacity to enter into the contract and whether the contract was rescinded when appellee sought to have the settlement agreement set aside in order to obtain year’s support and temporary alimony.

We granted the executors’ petition for writ of certiorari to determine whether an agreement made between a husband and wife to settle issues in a pending divorce action can be enforced when a party to the agreement dies before the agreement has been approved by, or made a judgment of, the trial court. For the reasons that follow, we affirm.