No. Under Georgia law, insisting on a prenuptial agreement as a condition of getting married is not duress.
What Duress Requires
Duress that will avoid a contract “must consist of threats of bodily or other harm, or other means amounting to coercion, or tending to coerce the will of another, and actually inducing him to do an act contrary to his free will,” and the threats “must be sufficient to overcome the mind and will of a person of ordinary firmness.” Mallen v. Mallen, 280 Ga. 43 (2005).
The Ultimatum Itself Is Not Duress
In Mallen, the wife was pregnant, and the pressure she pointed to was that the marriage would not happen without the agreement, leaving her pregnant and unmarried. The Georgia Supreme Court held that insistence on a prenuptial agreement as a condition of marriage “does not rise to the level of duress required to void an otherwise valid contract.”
The Court also looked at what she had actually done. She declined to sign the agreement in the form it was first presented to her, and agreed only after changes were made improving her position in the event of divorce or her husband’s death. That was an exercise of free will, not a will overcome.
Similarly, in Hiers v. Estate of Hiers, 278 Ga. App. 242 (2006), the Court of Appeals found no duress where “the husband did nothing other than ask for a prenuptial agreement as a condition of the marriage.” That, the court held, “is not sufficient to void the contract.”
The Question That Matters More
Duress is not the only voluntariness question. Blige v. Blige, 283 Ga. 65 (2008), held that the spouse seeking enforcement must also show that you entered into the agreement “[freely], voluntarily, and with full understanding of its terms after being offered the opportunity to consult with independent counsel.” Whether you had a real chance at your own lawyer often matters more than the ultimatum did.
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