In the case of Graev v. Graev, the Husband agreed to pay the Wife spousal support of $10,000 per month until August 2009 or until the Wife’s cohabitation with an unrelated adult for a period of sixty substantially consecutive days. 

 In 2004, the Husband stopped payments to the Wife claiming that she was cohabiting with an unrelated person who had stayed overnight at the Wife’s residence for at least sixty days and that their relationship was similar to that of lover and life partner.  The Wife claimed that she had not been cohabiting with the unrelated person because their relationship had been platonic for many years.

 The Supreme Court held that because the term cohabitation was not defined in the settlement agreement, its plain meaning applied: living together as partners in life, usually with the involvement of sexual relations.  The Supreme Court held that cohabitation had not occurred in this case and sided in favor of the Wife.

 The Appellate Division, 1^st Department agreed with the Supreme Court and also noted that no evidence had been introduced that the Wife and the unrelated person shared household expenses or functioned as an economic unit.  Thus, no cohabitation had occurred.

The Court of Appeals reversed, declining to take the position that cohabitants must function as an economic unit.  The Court held that without extrinsic evidence as to the parties’ intent regarding the definition of cohabitation in the settlement agreement, there is no way to assess what was meant by that term.  The Court remitted the matter for a hearing on the parties’ intent behind the term cohabitation.

This entry was posted on Friday, January 29th, 2010 at 8:00 am and is filed under Spousal Maintenance. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.