A vague term in a Georgia divorce settlement agreement is rarely void. Courts construe it if they can, and only a provision that is hopelessly ambiguous falls.
Courts Construe Before They Strike
Under OCGA 13-2-2(6), grammar may be disregarded “to effectuate the intention,” conjunctions may be “substituted for each other,” and “[i]n extreme cases of ambiguity, where the instrument as it stands is without meaning, words may be supplied.” So an argument that a clause is too vague to enforce usually loses.
In Hayward v. Lawrence, 252 Ga. 337 (1984), child support continued “until each child reaches eighteen years of age, or is no longer a full time student.” The trial court held the clause unenforceable, but the Georgia Supreme Court reversed: “The only vagueness in the above provision arises from the use of the word ‘or,’” and since the clause was meaningless unless it meant support for a child over eighteen still in school, the Court substituted “and” for “or.”
When Construction Fails
Occasionally nothing works. In Dohn v. Dohn, 260 Ga. 511 (1990), one child support paragraph gave the wife a charge card capped at $600 a month and also required the husband to keep $1,000 in a checking account she could use for “necessaries and other items for the children.” The wife read the account as an open-ended fund; the husband read everything as subject to the $600 cap. Each reading made part of the paragraph meaningless. The Georgia Supreme Court held the paragraph “hopelessly ambiguous; it is incapable of coherent construction. It is thus unenforceable.”
Even then, the rest of the agreement survived, and the husband’s duty to support the children remained, to be fixed by the court in a separate action.
The Practical Point
A court will work hard to give your agreement meaning, but it will not guess at a term you never actually agreed on.
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This post is a quick overview of the law and is not intended as legal advice. Please feel free to contact our office for a consultation if you have questions about this or any other legal aspects regarding your case!