By The Law Offices of Ronald H. Kauffman of Ronald H. Kauffman, P.A. posted in Agreements on Wednesday, February 17, 2016.
Signing a prenuptial agreement the day of your wedding is frightening. Is it enforceable? More frightening, do you need the new Zombie Apocalypse Clause?
Amazon Web Services just launched a new feature for its cloud based hosting service called “Lumberyard.” Lumberyard’s Service Terms agreement has an interesting clause:
The Lumberyard Materials are not intended for use with life-critical or safety-critical systems . . .
However, this restriction will not apply in the event of the occurrence (certified by the United States Centers for Disease Control or successor body) of a widespread viral infection transmitted via bites or contact with bodily fluids that causes human corpses to reanimate and seek to consume living human flesh, blood, brain or nerve tissue and is likely to result in the fall of organized civilization.
What about prenups? Are there loopholes? Florida has a policy of enforcing prenuptial agreements. While they can be difficult to void, it is not impossible . . . even if human corpses reanimate to consume the living.
I have written about agreements many times before. Florida has both case law and a statute to help lawyers, judges and the parties determine if a prenuptial agreement is enforceable.
Florida courts consider things such as fraud, duress, coercion, and whether there was financial disclosure. Under Florida’s Uniform Premarital Agreement Act, courts consider:
1. Fraud.
A prenuptial agreement requires each spouse to make full disclosure of assets and liabilities. In divorce, it is quite common to undervalue assets or fail to disclose them at all. If you can prove income or assets were not fully disclosed, you may have grounds to have the agreement voided.
2. Duress, Coercion or Overreaching.
If your prenuptial agreement was the product of fraud, duress, coercion, or overreaching, you may be able to block its enforcement. However, it can be extremely difficult to prove duress, coercion and overreaching.
3. Unconscionable.
You may be able to prevent enforcement if the agreement was unconscionable when it was executed and, before execution of the agreement, you were not provided a fair and reasonable disclosure of the assets and debts of the other party; you did not voluntarily and expressly waive, in writing, any right to this disclosure; and you did not have, or reasonably could not have had, an adequate knowledge of the other party’s assets and debts.
Keep the UPAA in mind if you are trying to get out of your prenup. And if the Centers for Disease Control is warning about “human corpses” seeking “to consume living human flesh”, keep that in mind too.
Amazon’s AWS web service agreement can be read here.