Background
Daniel Valiente and Jeymi Tatiana Romero divorced in 2024 under a final judgment incorporating their marital settlement agreement. The agreement stated that Valiente would pay Romero $140,000 for her one-half equity interest in the marital home and become its sole owner. If he did not make that payment within 60 days, the parties were to list the home for sale and divide the net sale proceeds equally.
Valiente could not refinance the home to fund the $140,000 payment. The home was sold for $465,000, leaving net proceeds of $186,068.03. Romero sought enforcement of the agreement on the ground that she was entitled to $140,000 from those proceeds; Valiente contended that the proceeds instead had to be split equally. The Broward County circuit court ruled for Romero.
The Court’s Holding
The Fourth District reversed. It held that the marital settlement agreement did not require Valiente to pay Romero $140,000 when the home was sold after he failed to refinance.
Reading the agreement as a whole, the court concluded that the $140,000 provision governed the refinance-and-buyout option, while the sale provision expressly required an equal division of net proceeds. Construing the agreement to guarantee Romero $140,000 even after a sale would render the equal-division language meaningless and would create an unreasonable result in light of the agreement’s move-out provision.
Key Takeaways
- Clear marital settlement agreements are interpreted from their text, with appellate review conducted de novo.
- Contract provisions must be read together so that none is rendered superfluous.
- When the agreement’s sale contingency calls for equal division of net proceeds, the former wife is entitled to one-half of the proceeds rather than the stated refinance buyout amount.
Why It Matters
The decision distinguishes a fixed equity buyout from a separate sale-contingency remedy. Family-law practitioners should make explicit whether a stated buyout amount survives a failed refinance and subsequent sale, particularly where the agreement separately specifies how sale proceeds will be distributed.
On remand, the circuit court must order the net proceeds from the marital home’s sale divided equally between Valiente and Romero.