Most lawyers use standard “boilerplate” language in many of the agreements that they draft. This saves them time from re-drafting a new form for each individual situation. Oftentimes, this language is the controlling factor in many disputes over agreements, which can be seen in Northern Trust v. Shaw. In this case, a surviving spouse sought $500,000 from her deceased husband’s estate under a prenuptial agreement. After the trial court awarded her this sum, the court of appeals took a hard look at the marital agreement to determine if this amount had already been awarded to her through an IRA distribution. The court eventually concluded that the surviving spouse was not to receive any portion of her claim because according to the agreement this would have been double dipping. The litigation in this case most likely could have been prevented with better drafting because assumption would have it that this was not the intention of either party.
See Jeffrey Skatoff, Marital Agreement Interpreted to Deny Spouse Additional Inheritance, Florida Probate Lawyers, July 10, 2016.
