The appellee, Sandra Guthrie, and the decedent, Dallas Guthrie, were married in February 1998. Ms. Guthrie initiated divorce proceedings in April of 2000, and the parties pаrticipated in mediation ordered by the trial court. As a result of the mediation, the Guthries executed a settlement agreement, signed by the parties and their attоrneys. Before the divorce court’s consideration of the agreement, Dallas obtained new counsel, renounced the agreement, and moved to set it aside. Dallas died before the divorce court had an opportunity to rule on the agreement or enter a decree of divorce. Thereafter, on motion hy Dallas’s attorney, the unadjudicated divorce proceeding was dismissed. 1
The executors of Dallas’s estate admitted his will to probate in Fulton County. Ms. Guthriе, in turn, brought the instant action in Fulton Superior Court to enforce the mediated settlement agreement. The executors answered, asserting that the agreement wаs unenforceable due to lack of consideration and thereafter filed a motion for summary judgment. In granting summary judgment to the executors, the trial court pronounced that it was acting in the nature of a divorce court in reviewing the settlement agreement and, relying upon Mathes v. Mathes 2 and other cases, the trial court exercised its discretion to reject the agreement and to grant summary judgment to the executors. The Court of Appeals disagreed and in Guthrie v. Guthrie, 3 reversed the trial court, finding that the сourt was only authorized to treat the matter before it as a contractual dispute, not a divorce case, and that it was error to summarily reject an otherwise valid contract because it arose out of a divorce proceeding. The Court of Appeals further determined that jury issues remained on the disрuted issues of the decedent’s mental capacity to enter into the contract and whether the contract was rescinded when appellee sought to have the settlement agreement set aside in order to obtain year’s support and temporary alimony.
We granted the executors’ petition for writ of certiorari to determine whether an agreement made between a husband and wife to settle issues in a pending divorce action can be enforced when a party to the agreement dies before the agreement has been approved by, or made a judgment of, the trial court. For the reasons that fоllow, we affirm.
1. The trial court erroneously determined that even though the divorce proceeding had abated, the settlement agreement was subject to thе same review that applies in a pending divorce action. When a trial court is presented with a settlement agreement in a divorce proceeding, the divorce court may exercise its discretion in deciding whether to make any or part of the settlement agreement between the parties a pаrt of the final decree.
4
Thus, similar to any pending proceeding, a trial court involved
■; Whereas in pending divorce cases the settlement agreement ultimately becomes the “judgment of the divorce court itself,” and is thus subject to a trial court’s “discretion to approve or reject the agreement, in whole or in part, [cit.],” 9 the interpretation of a settlement agreеment that a party seeks to enforce outside of the parameters of the divorce proceeding is strictly governed by the rules of contract construction. 10 Moreover, Eickhoff v. Eickhoff 11 and Brown v. Farkas 12 were cases in which the parties entered into a settlement agreement during the pendency of divorce proceedings, did not present the agreement to the trial court for approval, and the agreements were not incorporated into the final judgments of divorce. Despite the lack оf review and approval by the divorce court, this Court enforced the contracts, which did not conflict with the final judgments, under the ordinary rules of contract cоnstruction. 13 In addition, we have held that the enforceability of a settlement agreement disposing of property upon marital separation does not turn оn whether both parties to the contract survive or on whether a final judgment of divorce is entered. 14
For the foregoing reasons, we agree with the Court of Appeals that the trial court should have evaluated the parties’ agreement under the ordinary rules of contract construction and thus erred by evaluating the аgreement under the rules that control when a trial court is determining whether to incorporate a settlement agreement into its final judgment of divorce.
2. The exеcutors contend that the agreement was expressly contingent upon a decree of divorce being entered and approval by the court of thе agreement. We disagree with this contention. To begin, the question whether the agreement was dependent upon the occurrence of these contingencies is controlled by the intent of the parties. 15 In this regard, “[w]e look first to the language employed in the agreement to determine the intent of the parties. If the language is plain and unambiguous and the intent may be clearly gathered therefrom, we need look no further.” 16
For the foregoing reasons, we hold that the Court of Appeals was correct in determining that the agreement could be enforced even where one of the parties died before the entry of a judgment of divorce.
Judgment affirmed.
Notes
See
Segars v. Brooks,
Vereen v. Vereen,
Carswell v. Shannon,
For example, the trial court can exercise its discretion to refuse to approve the аgreement where the agreement was procured by fraud or duress.
Williams v. Williams,
Vereen v. Vereen,
Barrett v. Manus,
Bridges v. Bridges,
See
Kreimer v. Kreimer,
See
Eickhoff,
See, e.g.,
Simpson v. King,
See
Cousins v. Cousins,
Carlos,