Lussier v. LussierLussier v. Lussier
To fulfill the family court’s order, the parties executed several documents. First, defendant established the Lussier Trust, a revocable trust containing assets in an account held by Salomon Smith Barney sufficient to pay defendant’s obligations under the final order. To perfect plaintiffs lien on the account, a Security Agreement signed by both parties gave plaintiff a first and exclusive security interest in the trust account. The trust also executed an Account Control Agreement that set out in greater detail the assets in the account, Salomon Smith Barney’s responsibility to pay on demand, and the plaintiff’s ability, as the secured party, to give Salomon Smith Barney entitlement orders to the account.
On July 13,2001, relying on a provision in the Account Control Agreement, plaintiff issued an entitlement order to Salomon Smith Barney ordering it to transfer all of the assets in the trust account, approximately $3.5 million, to an account in her name. Defendant was not in default under the terms of the final order. After defendant filed several motions to prevent this transaction, the family court issued a temporary order declaring the entitlement order null and void, and ordering plaintiff not to take any actions to obtain possession or title to the assets in the account. The family court ruled that defendant had not defaulted on his maintenance obligation, and that plaintiff was not entitled to accelerate the maintenance award to a lump sum payment rather than the quarterly awards ordered by the court. On August 7, 2001, the court made that order final following a hearing. Plaintiff appeals.
Plaintiff argues that the Account Control Agreement was an independent contract entered into after the divorce was final and therefore outside the jurisdiction of the family court. Plaintiff also claims that the plain language of the Account Control Agreement gives her the exclusive right to control the account by issuing entitlement orders to Salomon Smith Barney. The entitlement order that she issued directing that the account be turned over to an account in her name, she contends, was part of that Agreement. She claims the family court erred in construing the Account Control Agreement as only a security agreement that is part of the final divorce order. Finally, she argues that the court erred in ordering her to pay attorney’s fees.
When parties to a divorce stipulate to the terms of the dissolution of their marriage, we will honor the agreement under the ordinary rules of contract. Duke v. Duke,
It is within this context that the Account Control Agreement on which plaintiff relies was signed. The document itself describes the security interest that has been created for plaintiff and states that the account control provisions are “in connection therewith.” By its terms, the Account Control Agreement is an extension of the security agreement between the parties, as required by the divorce order. It describes the assets in the account and notes that the “[a]ssets are pledged according to the terms of the Security Agreement.” The provision at issue here, on which plaintiff asserts her right to the corpus of the trust, is to protect Salomon Smith Barney, as the administrator of the account, from liability for responding to a payment demand that may have been issued wrongfully. Thus, if Salomon Smith Barney had transferred the $3.5 million dollars in the account to plaintiff, it would not be liable to the trust, even if plaintiffs actions were in violation of the final divorce order. Despite plaintiffs argument, the provision on entitlement orders was not intended, under the circumstances here, to create a light in plaintiff to the money in the account different from the rights she has under the final divorce order. Indeed, it is clear that the trust was established to pay plaintiffs maintenance from the interest generated by the corpus, so that defendant’s principal would remain at the end of his obligation. Plaintiff had no light to the entire corpus of the trust at the time of her order. Nor was the Account Control Agreement intended to convey any authority to plaintiff outside the context of the security interest in the trust account. Cf. In re Stacey,
It is telling that plaintiffs argument in support of her construction of the Account Control Agreement before the trial court could not explain why the trust had decided, generously, to make the corpus of the trust account available to her within three months of the stipulation and final order limiting her maintenance to $75,000 per quarter. The trial court properly concluded, however, that the Security Agreement and Account Control Agreement were executed to implement the final order and not to grant plaintiff rights different from those to which the parties had so recently agreed. In view of the fact that plaintiff’s attempt was so vigorously contested by the creator of the trust, it can hardly have been the intent of the trust to change the terms of the agreement through the mechanism of the Account Control Agreement, the primary purpose of which was to perfect
Once the factual background of the case is understood, it is apparent that no jurisdictional problem exists. The family court has jurisdiction over its own orders. Title 4 V.S.A § 454(4) grants the family court exclusive jurisdiction over all divorce proceedings. Where the final divorce order incorporates a stipulation agreement between the parties, that agreement becomes part of the divorce proceedings, and “[a]lthough an independent contract, . . . [it] is within the family court’s jurisdiction.” Manosh v. Manosh,
Finally, plaintiff claims that the court should not have awarded defendant attorney's fees for this matter. An award of attorney’s fees in a divorce action is a matter of judicial discretion. Kohut v. Kohut,
Affirmed.