The petitioner brought her suit in equity seeking cancellation of an antenuptial agreement on the ground оf fraud. The respondent husband filed a plea in abatement. It was overruled, following which he filed an answer dеnying all allegations of the petition. He now appeals from a decree of the Probate judge overruling his plea in abatement and from the final decree which ordered the antenuptial agreement cancelled. There were two reports of material facts; one on the plea in abatement and the other on the subject matter of the petition itself. The evidence is reported.
1. We first disсuss the plea in abatement. The judge’s report indicates that the parties were married in Florida in Januаry, 1963, and last lived together in Fall River, having separated in October, 1965. In May of 1966, the petitioner, described as of New Bedford, brought a separate support proceeding in the Bristol County Probate Court against the respondent, described as of Westport. In September, 1966, this proceeding was dismissed on motion of the petitioner. Since September 14, 1966, the petitioner has resided in an apartment in Boston for which she has a two year lease running through September 30, 1968.
The respondent claims that the suit was vulnerable to abatement in thаt jurisdiction in the Probate Court is based on residence which is equivalent to domicil and that the
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petitioner’s domicil was that of her husband which was in Bristol County. He adds that he had committed no wrong against the petitioner which wоuld justify the establishment by her of a separate domicil.
Rolfe
v.
Walsh,
Addressing ourselves to the second contention, we arе of opinion that while G. L. c. 215, § 7, confers exclusive jurisdiction of a case on that Probate Court which first takеs cognizance of it, it is not applicable here in that the two actions brought by the petitioner werе different. The petitioner brought her first action under G. L. c. 209, § 32, while she instituted her second one in equity under G. L. c. 215, § 6, as most recently amended in 1963.
The 1963 amendment of G. L. c. 215, § 6, bears on the respondent’s first contention. This amendment conferred on the Probate Courts a new and broad equity jurisdiction concurrent with that of the Superior Court, with certain immaterial exceptions. It is apparent that the Legislature intended to make requirements for commencing and prosecuting suits in equity in both the Superior and Probate courts as closely similar as possible. Cеrtainly nothing in G. L. c. 215 indicates a contrary intent. The equity jurisdiction of the Superior Court is established by G. L. c. 214. Section 5 оf that chapter provides that the venue of suits in equity shall be the same as that of transitory actions. General Laws c. 223, § 1, lays the venue of transitory actions in the county where either party “lives or has his usual place of business.” We need not here treat the question of whether “fives” as employed in G. L. c. 223, § 1, is to be equatеd with “domicil.” See
Williams
v.
Campbell,
2. Passing to the nub of the petitioner’s claim that she was induced by fraud to sign the agreement, we cannot discеrn that the judge was plainly wrong in making the findings contained in his report. He found that it was executed in the office оf the respondent’s attorney in Rhode Island prior to the marriage and at a time when the respondent held executive offices in a corporation in which he owned one third of the capital stock. This hе sold in 1967 for the sum of $700,000, yet he told her before the execution of the agreement that outside of his salary he was “absolutely flat.” (On the witness stand he defined “flat” as “without any assets other than my salary at the time.”) The petitiоner first learned of his stock interest after he sold it. The judge could have found, as he did, that the petitioner wоuld have married her husband had there been no prenuptial agreement, that she signed it at his insistence, that shе believed him, and that she would not have signed it if her husband *569 had disclosed to her the true state of his financial worth. Thе agreement which she did sign would have given her only $25,000 in the event of a marital breakup, to be paid over a five year period. The classic elements of deceit could have been found by the judge and we see no reason to disturb his findings.
Decrees affirmed.