Importance of Written Divorce Agreements

Susan Michaels and Mark Steinway are the founders of Pasado’s, an Everett, Washington animal sanctuary. Michaels and Steinway are divorcing and now find themselves embroiled in a dispute about an agreement into which they entered six years ago, concerning the land they own, on which the animal sanctuary sits. Each has a different version of the terms of the agreement, and the written documentation that exists is ambiguous.

The case demonstrates that handshake agreements, or even loosely-worded written agreements, are insufficient. Written agreements are a form of insurance. They are not an indication of a lack of trust, and they do not foreshadow a breach of contract.

However, no two parties can be completely guaranteed to remain on good terms for the remainder of their lives, particularly those who enter into an agreement because they are getting divorced. Divorce practically changes people’s DNA and makes them do things and act in ways they never would have even fathomed before.

Divorcing people must make written agreements on a good day, so that if a bad day ever comes when they are not on the same good terms, there is a written record and no one has to argue about it. Michaels and Steinway could have saved themselves considerable headaches if they had simply memorialized their commitments in writing before their communication degenerated and they began to acquire a self-serving motivation to shade their recollections of the agreement in their own favor.