A Georgia court construes a divorce settlement agreement in three steps, and only the rare ambiguity that survives all three ever reaches a jury.
The Three Steps
Young v. Stump, 294 Ga. App. 351 (2008), sets them out: (1) if no ambiguity appears, the court enforces the contract “according to its terms irrespective of all technical or arbitrary rules of construction”; (2) if one does appear, “the existence or nonexistence of an ambiguity is a question of law for the court”; and (3) “a jury question arises only when there appears to be an ambiguity in the contract which cannot be negated by the court’s application of the statutory rules of construction.” Those statutory rules are in OCGA 13-2-2.
What Counts as an Ambiguity
“Ambiguity in a contract is defined as duplicity, indistinctness or an uncertainty of meaning or expression.” Young. Two spouses reading a clause differently is not enough. Neither is a gap: “Simply because an agreement does not control the disposition of property jointly owned by the parties does not make it an ambiguous instrument.” Lee v. White, 249 Ga. 99 (1982).
Examples
In Frier v. Frier, 303 Ga. App. 20 (2010), each spouse kept the accounts “in their own individual names,” and the husband died without removing his ex-wife as payable-on-death beneficiary of a $100,000 certificate of deposit. Finding “no ambiguity in this language,” the Court of Appeals stopped at step one: the agreement never mentioned the beneficiary designation, so she kept the money.
In Christian v. Christian, 300 Ga. 263 (2016), a separation agreement gave the wife one-half of the husband’s “retirement, 401K or other employment benefits.” The missing serial comma left two reasonable readings: half of all three, or half of one. The Georgia Supreme Court held the clause ambiguous and sent it back for the trial court to resolve, first from the rest of the agreement and then, if needed, from outside evidence.
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