Washington’s Court of Appeals handed down a ruling on October 29 that fundamentally shifts the financial leverage in high-stakes divorces. Division Three determined that trial courts are not shackled to prenuptial agreements that require each spouse to pay their own attorney fees. Judges now have the explicit discretion to order the wealthier partner to cover reasonable legal costs incurred in any aspect of the dissolution, not just those directly tied to parenting or child support. This breaks a long-standing legal deadlock that left financially vulnerable spouses staring down bills their ex-spouses could easily afford but refused to pay.
The decision stems from a case involving a couple who married in July 2019 after signing an antenuptial agreement in 2018. At the time of the prenup, the husband’s net worth stood at over $15 million, while the wife’s was approximately $175,000. The agreement stipulated that each would bear their own legal costs in any dissolution. The couple had a child, and the wife served as a stay-at-home mother, draining her limited savings to cover half of the family’s monthly expenses. By July 2022, the marriage had collapsed; the wife left the home and secured a domestic violence protection order before the husband filed for legal separation and subsequently dissolution.
The litigation revealed a stark imbalance in resources and behavior. The husband gifted the wife a 2018 Porsche 911 Cabriolet, which he later claimed was at a dealership when the court ordered the return of her personal items. The car was actually sitting with an exotic car consignment dealer for six months. The trial judge found the husband in contempt four times and intransigent three times, imposing $5,000 in sanctions specifically related to the Porsche episode. The wife, meanwhile, accrued $277,710.29 in legal debt by the time she filed a supplemental declaration, noting her law firm had to borrow heavily to continue representing her.
The legal pivot hinged on the interpretation of In re Marriage of Burke, a 1999 decision that established prenups could not block fee requests for parenting plan disputes. The husband argued this protection applied strictly to child-related issues. The appeals court rejected that narrow view, reasoning that limiting fee awards to parenting matters would allow wealthy spouses to drag out other financial disputes until their partners could no longer hire counsel. The majority emphasized that judicial discretion is necessary to prevent this kind of strategic financial attrition. The court did not finalize the exact dollar amount owed, instead remanding the case to the trial judge to determine the specific sum of reasonable fees based on the factual record.