In Harris v. Harris (9/30/14), the Court of Appeals upholds a Circuit Court ruling rejects a fraud challenge filed several months after a final divorce decree, which was agreed-on and incorporated a postmarital agreement. The husband claimed the wife had failed to disclose several debts in the postnup, he only started finding out about them a few months after the divorce, and he would not have signed the postnup if he had known. But he trial court said husband could have raised his fraud claims during the divorce process, so he cannot now. The Court of Appeals says that "nothing in the recorrd suggests otherwise."
The postnup was really a separation agreement; it was made three years after the couple had separated permanently, and shortly before the divorce. The agreement had a clause about after-discovered assets and liabilities, but apparently it did not help. The opinion does not disclose whether the debts were ones that actually affected the husband, nor any of the facts or claims in the controversy over whether the husband should have known of the debts at the time of the agreement, except that it quotes the wife's cliam that if he had undertaken a minimal investigation into his own financial situation, he would have discovered them. The wife's counsel used a "plea in bar" successfully to narrow down the issues and dispose of the case. So in that process no evidence was taken, and the husband's case was rejected even with all his factual claims taken as true.
Although a "res judicata" does not apply when extrinsic fraud is proven, it does apply here because such fraud is "conduct that prevents a fair submission of the controversy to the court." The Court relied on Ellett v. Ellett (2001) which is said was very similar.
The appeals court declined to award wife fees on appeal.
Laches was mentioned but not addressed because it was not "the best and narrowest ground available".