JOAN FIESLER, N/K/A JOAN RADFORD, APPELLANT,
v.
DAVID D. FIESLER, APPELLEE
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The court held that the husband was bound by his unqualified agreement to pay private school expenses, regardless of the cost.
[1] A party is bound by an unambiguous and unqualified undertaking in a property settlement agreement to pay the cost of private school expenses for children.
[2] A party's obligation to pay private school expenses under a property settlement agreement is not limited by the parties' initial contemplation of costs if the agreement c…
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Join FLexlaw to unlock all legal intelligenceA property settlement agreement required the husband to pay private school expenses for his children. When the husband refused to pay the full amount …
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SCHWARTZ, Judge.
In a 1976 property settlement agreement incorporated into the judgment of dissolution, the appellee-husband agreed, without stated limitation, to pay the “cost of private school expenses” for his two children, who were placed in the custody of his ex-wife. After he nevertheless declined to meet $5,694.56 in charges for the 1979-1980 school year at the Gulliver Academy, the mother moved to enforce the pertinent provision of the agreement. Mr. Fiesler resisted the motion on the grounds that, at the time of the agreement, the parties “contemplated” school costs of between $1,000-$1,-500 per year and that the mother had unjustifiably attempted to multiply his obligations by enrolling the children in a vastly more expensive institution. The trial judge denied the expenses claimed in their entirety.1 We reverse.
The husband did not, and could not, allege that the choice of Gulliver was beyond the authority of the mother as the children’s custodian. See Bennett v. Bennett, 73 So. 2d 274 (Fla.1954). Nor did he contend that he was financially unable to pay the tuition required by that school, so as perhaps to justify a modification of the agreement accordingly. See Osman v. Osman, 280 So. 2d 67 (Fla. 3d DCA 1973), cert. denied, 289 So. 2d 6 (Fla.1973). Under these circumstances, he was bound by his clear, unambiguous and unqualified undertaking to pay the full amount of the bills in question. Jaffee v. Jaffee, 394 So. 2d 443 (Fla. 3d DCA 1981) (holding it improper to vary terms of property settlement agreement “through the insertion of qualifying language which does not appear on its face”); Adler v. Adler, 391 So. 2d 242 (Fla. 3d DCA 1980). The order under review is therefore reversed and the cause is remanded with directions to grant the appellant’s “motion for payment of private school expenses.”
Reversed.
. This ruling is difficult to understand since, even under the husband’s position, he would have been liable for at least the $1,500 he “contemplated” would be paid.
Cases With Similar Vibessemantic neighbors from the corpus
Citator
Cited By
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Castellano v. Castellano, 563 So. 2d 142 (Fla. 4th DCA 1990)…for private schooling. I deem his failure to have the court resolve the apparent dispute over which school the children would attend, to be an acquiescence in the wife’s decision as to where the children would be enrolled. As in Fiesler v. Fiesler, 395 So. 2d 1261 (Fla. 3rd DCA 1981) the father did not allege that the choice of school was beyond his financial resources. To the contrary, he approved and paid for the children’s attendance at Miami Country Day School prior to the time that his income increased t…
Authorities Cited
- Jaffee v. Jaffee, 394 So. 2d 443 (Fla. 3d DCA 1981)
- Bennett v. Bennett, 73 So. 2d 274 (Fla. 1954)
- Osman v. Osman, 280 So. 2d 67 (Fla. 3d DCA 1973)
- Areta Adler v. Morton Adler, 391 So. 2d 242 (Fla. 3d DCA 1980)
- Daniel Osman, M.D. v. Osman, 289 So. 2d 6 (Fla. 1973)
- Kilpatrick v. State, 289 So. 2d 6 (Fla. 1974)