A surging alarm from a recent spate of matrimonial cases, with interdepartmental differences, raises a critical issue that many practitioners comfortably assumed had a built-in simple and ready answer: Can a spouse, who stands in a fiduciary relationship to the other spouse and who is further required by decisional and statutory authority to make broad disclosure during a divorce action, conceal information during settlement negotiations and still prevail in a subsequent action to vacate the agreement?
The obligation to accurately disclose does not exist in a vacuum. Although the first spouse may not engage in wrongdoing in making disclosure, a parallel obligation is imposed upon the other party to independently investigate and confirm the transmitted information, if such information is available and the other party has the means to do so. This is the equal and opposite counterbalancing reaction to disclosure in contract doctrine.
