What Liz L. v. Ursel U. Means for Massachusetts Prenuptial Agreements, Alimony, and Property Division
The Massachusetts Appeals Court issued an important decision on September 15, 2026, addressing what happens when a prenuptial agreement signed decades ago collides with changes in Massachusetts divorce law that occurred years later.
In Liz L. v. Ursel U., No. 25-P-281, the parties signed a prenuptial agreement in 2000, twelve years before the Massachusetts Alimony Reform Act took effect. When they eventually divorced, a Probate and Family Court judge applied the newer alimony statute and ordered the husband’s substantial alimony obligation to terminate when he reached full retirement age. The Appeals Court concluded that was error.
But the decision goes considerably further than alimony.
The Appeals Court also concluded that several valuable business interests acquired by the husband during the marriage had been improperly excluded from the divisible marital estate. The reason was not that prenuptial agreements cannot protect business interests. Rather, the particular assets did not satisfy the agreement’s definition of “Separate Property,” even though they fell within another defined category of company interests.
The court also corrected how millions of dollars in advance legal-fee payments were accounted for in the property division and required the trial court to address discrepancies in its valuation of certain debentures.
The result is a decision with unusually broad lessons for Massachusetts divorces involving prenuptial agreements, alimony, closely held businesses, trusts, and complex property division.
Perhaps the most important lesson is a simple one: the exact words of an agreement matter, sometimes decades after those words were chosen.
The Facts of Liz L. v. Ursel U.
The case arose from an extraordinarily high-asset marriage, but the legal principles apply far beyond ultra-high-net-worth divorces.
The parties signed an antenuptial agreement, more commonly called a prenuptial agreement, on October 4, 2000, ten days before they married. The agreement addressed both alimony and property division and protected substantial portions of the husband’s preexisting wealth, including interests in family trusts and interests associated with a family business. The parties later had two children.
The marriage lasted nineteen years before the wife filed for divorce in November 2019. A ten-day trial was held in 2022, during which 2,699 exhibits were admitted and five witnesses testified. The Probate and Family Court ultimately issued an 89-page decision containing 445 findings of fact in December 2024.
One point is particularly important: the parties had already stipulated that their prenuptial agreement was valid and enforceable.
Accordingly, the Appeals Court was not deciding whether the agreement passed Massachusetts’s usual tests for enforceability. It was deciding what the agreement actually meant.
That distinction matters. Massachusetts courts ordinarily examine a prenuptial agreement both when it was executed and when enforcement is sought. Liz L., however, was primarily a contract-interpretation dispute because enforceability itself was no longer contested.
What Did the Probate and Family Court Decide?
The trial judge interpreted the agreement in a way that favored the husband on two major disputed issues.
First, the judge concluded that the agreement did not establish how long alimony should continue. Treating the agreement as “incomplete” on duration, the judge applied the Alimony Reform Act of 2011 and ordered alimony to terminate when the husband reached full retirement age in 2031.
The financial stakes were substantial. The judge found that maintaining a lifestyle similar to the marital lifestyle required approximately $5.8 million annually. After accounting for the wife’s other income, including investment income and child support, the judge ordered general term alimony of approximately $4.015 million annually, or $334,602 per month.
Second, the judge excluded several categories of company-related interests that the husband acquired during the marriage from the property available for division.
The wife appealed both issues. The husband cross-appealed an apparent mathematical problem involving the valuation of certain debentures.
The Appeals Court ultimately vacated the portions of the divorce judgment concerning alimony and property division and sent the case back to the Probate and Family Court.
The Law in Effect When a Prenuptial Agreement Is Signed Can Matter Decades Later
One of the most consequential parts of Liz L. concerns which version of Massachusetts law governs an older agreement.
The Appeals Court relied on a longstanding principle of contract law: generally, the law existing when an agreement is made becomes part of that agreement. Laws enacted later ordinarily do not become part of the agreement unless its provisions demonstrate that the parties intended to incorporate future changes in the law.
The parties signed this agreement in 2000. The Alimony Reform Act did not become effective until 2012.
The Appeals Court found nothing in the agreement establishing that the parties intended later changes in Massachusetts alimony law to govern the alimony obligation they created. As a result, the court looked to the law in effect when the agreement was executed rather than simply applying the law existing when the divorce occurred.
This does not mean that every prenuptial agreement signed before 2012 is exempt from the Alimony Reform Act.
The language of the particular agreement remains critical. The question is not merely, “When was the prenup signed?” It is also, “What did the parties actually agree to, and did they provide for subsequent changes in law?”
That distinction is one reason this case deserves careful reading rather than a shorthand rule.
The Alimony Clause Was More Than a Reservation of Rights
The husband argued that the agreement merely preserved the wife’s ability to ask a future court for alimony. Under that interpretation, the amount and duration could be decided under whatever alimony law existed when the divorce occurred.
The Appeals Court disagreed.
The agreement stated that if the parties had children when the marriage ended, the wife did not waive alimony and the parties “will in good faith negotiate” an amount of alimony “to be paid” by the husband.
Those words mattered.
The court focused particularly on “will” and “to be paid,” concluding that they reflected mandatory rather than optional language. The agreement also supplied substantive rules for calculating the obligation. Alimony was intended to:
- allow the wife to maintain a lifestyle similar to the lifestyle the parties maintained with their children before divorce;
- take into account the wife’s other sources of support, including investment income and child support; and
- avoid reducing the husband’s lifestyle below the wife’s.
Those provisions went much further than simply saying the wife could ask for alimony someday. The Appeals Court held that the parties had created an affirmative and enforceable obligation for the husband to pay it.
That distinction can be enormously important in older agreements.
Compare language stating that someone “may seek alimony” or “reserves the right to request alimony” with language establishing that alimony “will” be paid and describing how it is calculated. The first may preserve an issue for later determination. The second can create a contractual obligation in its own right.
No End Date Did Not Mean the Agreement Was Incomplete
The Probate and Family Court judge viewed the absence of an express alimony termination date as a gap that the Alimony Reform Act could fill.
The Appeals Court reached the opposite conclusion.
The agreement did not specify an end date because, according to the Appeals Court’s interpretation, the parties had agreed to an obligation of indefinite duration. The court found additional support in the provision requiring the parties to negotiate and, when appropriate, renegotiate alimony “from time to time.”
In other words, silence about an end date did not necessarily create ambiguity. In the context of this agreement, it reflected an obligation without a predetermined ending date.
That is a particularly important drafting lesson.
An agreement does not always need to use the word “indefinite” for a court to conclude that the parties intended an obligation to have no fixed termination date. Courts interpret agreements as a whole, giving effect to the language the parties actually selected.
For people negotiating agreements today, however, leaving such an important matter to implication is generally undesirable. If the parties intend alimony to terminate upon retirement, after a specified number of years, or upon some other event, saying so expressly can eliminate an enormous amount of uncertainty.
A Surviving Agreement Is Fundamentally Different from an Ordinary Modifiable Alimony Order
The agreement provided that it would survive the divorce judgment rather than merge into it.
That distinction carries substantial legal consequences.
A merged agreement becomes part of the judgment and many of its support provisions may later be modified under the statutory standards applicable to court orders. A surviving agreement retains independent contractual significance.
The Appeals Court specifically noted that because this agreement survived rather than merged, the alimony obligation could not simply be modified using the familiar “material change in circumstances” standard.
The agreement also stated that it could not be altered, amended, or abrogated except through a written instrument executed by both parties.
For anyone entering a Massachusetts divorce with an older agreement, one of the first questions should therefore be whether the relevant provision merged, survived, or was treated differently under the judgment. That determination can fundamentally change the legal analysis.
The Alimony Reform Act’s Retirement Rule Did Not Override This Agreement
Current Massachusetts law generally provides that general term alimony terminates when the payor reaches full retirement age, subject to statutory provisions allowing the court to set or extend a different termination date in appropriate circumstances. G.L. c. 208, § 49(f).
But Liz L. demonstrates why that rule cannot simply be applied mechanically to every alimony obligation.
Here, the Appeals Court concluded that the 2012 statutory retirement provision did not govern the affirmative alimony obligation created by this surviving 2000 agreement. The Probate and Family Court therefore could not use § 49(f) to impose a 2031 termination date that the agreement itself did not contain.
That does not mean retirement is irrelevant in every older case. It means the source of the alimony obligation, the date it arose, the language creating it, and whether an agreement merged or survived all matter.
How Liz L. Fits With the Appeals Court’s Recent Popp Decision
Liz L. is particularly interesting because it arrived less than two months after another important Appeals Court alimony case, Popp v. Popp.
In Popp, the Appeals Court also rejected the mechanical use of the Alimony Reform Act’s retirement-age provision in connection with an older alimony judgment. The legal route was different, however. Popp involved modification of a pre-Alimony Reform Act divorce judgment, while Liz L. involves the interpretation of an affirmative alimony obligation contained in a surviving 2000 prenuptial agreement.
Taken together, the cases reinforce an increasingly important point in Massachusetts alimony litigation: the date and legal source of an alimony obligation can matter as much as the current statute.
A spouse cannot safely assume that reaching Social Security full retirement age automatically ends every Massachusetts alimony obligation.
You can read our detailed analysis of Popp v. Popp here.
A Defined Business Interest Is Not Automatically Separate Property
The property-division portion of Liz L. may ultimately be just as important as the alimony holding.
The agreement established two basic asset categories: “Separate Property” and property that did not satisfy the definition of Separate Property.
It separately defined certain “Interests in [the company]” and “Trust Interests.” Under the agreement, qualifying company and trust interests that were separate property were excluded from equitable division.
The trial judge effectively treated the label “Interests in [the company]” as enough to make those assets nondivisible.
The Appeals Court held that this skipped an essential step.
An asset first had to qualify as “Separate Property” under the agreement’s definition. Only then did the special exclusion for protected company interests become relevant. If an asset did not satisfy the definition of Separate Property, it fell into the agreement’s non-separate category and remained potentially divisible.
This is a highly practical contract-drafting lesson.
Defining an asset class is not necessarily the same thing as declaring every asset in that class to be separate or nondivisible. Definitions, operative provisions, exclusions, and tracing language must work together.
How an Asset Was Acquired Mattered
The Appeals Court then applied that framework to company interests the husband acquired during the marriage.
The disputed property included:
- 359,366 company shares purchased using company loans;
- interests in company investor entities received as dividends on those shares; and
- company debentures purchased with cash.
The trial court treated those assets as protected company interests.
The Appeals Court concluded that they had not been shown to satisfy the agreement’s separate-property definition and therefore should have been included in the divisible estate. On remand, the court directed that they be included and that the wife receive 55 percent, subject to the other adjustments required by the decision.
The lesson is not that assets acquired during marriage can never be protected by a prenup.
The lesson is that the method of acquisition must fit the agreement.
Where an agreement uses detailed tracing rules, lawyers and financial experts may need to determine not just what an asset is, but where the money used to acquire it came from and whether that source falls within the contractual definition.
“Income From Separate Property” Is Not Necessarily the Same as Property Purchased with That Income
This may be the most technically interesting property issue in the decision.
The agreement expressly included income from Separate Property within its definition of Separate Property.
The husband argued that certain debentures acquired during the marriage were therefore protected because they had allegedly been purchased using income generated by his separate property.
Even assuming that were factually correct, the Appeals Court concluded that it did not resolve the issue.
The agreement separately protected:
- property identified as separate in the original exhibits;
- proceeds from the sale of that property; and
- property subsequently acquired with those sale proceeds.
What it did not say was that every new asset purchased using income generated by separate property automatically became separate property.
Thus, the income itself might remain separate, while a replacement asset purchased with that income might not satisfy the contractual definition.
That is a subtle distinction with potentially enormous consequences.
For example, an agreement might say that distributions from a trust remain separate property. That does not necessarily answer what happens if the recipient takes a distribution and uses it years later to purchase a business interest, investment account, or piece of real estate. The answer depends on the agreement’s tracing and replacement-property provisions.
For attorneys drafting prenuptial agreements involving significant family wealth, trusts, investment portfolios, or business interests, Liz L. is a strong reminder that tracing language deserves as much attention as the initial definition of separate property.
Courts Read Agreements as a Whole, Not One Definition at a Time
The husband argued for a broader interpretation under which all assets satisfying the definition of company interests would remain protected.
The Appeals Court rejected that interpretation not only because of the contractual language, but also because of the result it could produce.
Under the husband’s interpretation, divisible income or jointly owned assets potentially could be converted into protected company interests and thereby removed from the divisible marital estate.
The court viewed that result as inconsistent with the agreement read as a whole and potentially inconsistent with the principles governing enforceable prenuptial agreements.
This illustrates an important concept in contract interpretation.
A court generally will not isolate one favorable definition and ignore provisions elsewhere in the agreement that change how that definition operates. The agreement must be read as an integrated document.
Property Division and Alimony Remain Interconnected
The Appeals Court’s remedy also demonstrates how property division and alimony can affect one another.
Because the wife will receive additional property after the improperly excluded company interests are returned to the divisible estate, that redistribution could increase her investment income.
The Appeals Court therefore expressly allowed the Probate and Family Court judge, in her discretion, to recalculate alimony if the additional assets increase the wife’s income, using the same criteria used in the original alimony calculation.
This is an important point in complex divorce cases.
A ruling that increases one spouse’s property award does not necessarily leave the support calculation untouched. Massachusetts law treats property division and alimony as separate legal issues, but economically they can be closely connected. Section 34 itself directs judges to consider the parties’ estates, income, needs, and alimony when dividing property.
Advance Distributions Have to Be Accounted for Correctly
The decision also contains a useful lesson about interim distributions and legal fees.
During the divorce, the parties agreed that the husband would pay legal fees and expenses for both sides and that those payments would be treated as advance distributions against each party’s ultimate share of the marital estate.
The trial judge deducted the wife’s legal fees from her 55 percent share of the assets remaining at the end of the case. But the judge did not similarly account for the husband’s legal fees or first restore the advance distributions when calculating the total estate.
The Appeals Court held that this methodology did not implement the parties’ agreement.
Instead, the legal fees had to be included when determining the total divisible estate, the estate then divided according to the 55/45 allocation, and each party’s advance distribution deducted from that person’s resulting share.
The issue sounds mathematical, but it is economically significant. When millions of dollars are involved, the sequence of the calculation can materially change the result.
Even the Asset Schedule and Arithmetic Can Become Appellate Issues
The husband also identified inconsistent figures involving certain company debentures.
The Appeals Court agreed that the trial judge’s findings and asset tables contained a discrepancy, but the record did not permit the appellate judges to determine which number was correct. The matter therefore had to be resolved on remand.
This part of the decision is less doctrinally dramatic, but it carries a practical lesson for complex divorce litigation.
Asset schedules, valuation tables, stipulations, and proposed judgments are not administrative afterthoughts. In a large marital estate, the arithmetic used to implement the judge’s findings can become just as important as the legal rulings that precede it.
What Liz L. Does Not Hold
Because Liz L. involves unusually large financial numbers, it would be easy to focus on the wealth involved and miss how fact-specific the decision actually is.
The case does not hold that:
- every prenuptial agreement signed before 2012 creates indefinite alimony;
- the Alimony Reform Act can never apply when an older prenup exists;
- every business interest acquired during marriage is divisible;
- assets purchased with separate funds always become marital property;
- all surviving agreements can never be challenged or affected by later proceedings; or
- the Appeals Court found this prenup enforceable after independently conducting the usual enforceability analysis.
Instead, the decision is fundamentally about interpreting this agreement according to its language, the law incorporated into it, the distinction between surviving and merged provisions, and the specific definitions governing how assets were classified.
That makes the opinion more useful, not less. It shows exactly how carefully Massachusetts courts can analyze individual words and interconnected provisions when millions of dollars and long-term support obligations depend on their meaning.
What This Means if You Already Have a Massachusetts Prenuptial Agreement
If you signed a prenuptial agreement years ago, Liz L. is a reason to read the actual document before making assumptions about what current Massachusetts divorce law will do.
Important questions may include:
- When was the agreement executed?
- Does it incorporate future changes in law?
- Does it create an affirmative obligation or merely preserve a future right?
- Is alimony duration expressly addressed?
- Does the agreement survive a divorce judgment or merge into it?
- How precisely is separate property defined?
- What does the agreement say about income, appreciation, proceeds, distributions, and assets purchased with those funds?
- Are later-acquired business or investment interests actually covered by the definitions?
Two agreements that appear similar at first glance may lead to very different results because of only a few words.
What This Means for Couples Drafting Prenuptial Agreements Today
For couples negotiating an agreement now, Liz L. provides several useful drafting lessons.
Address future changes in law. If the parties want future statutes to govern particular obligations, the agreement should address that intention clearly. If they want rights fixed under the law existing when the agreement is signed, that can also be addressed expressly.
State the duration of alimony. If alimony should terminate at a particular age, date, remarriage, retirement, or another event, saying so directly is safer than leaving a court to infer the intended duration decades later.
Distinguish reservations from obligations. Language preserving someone’s right to seek alimony is different from language requiring one spouse to pay it.
Draft tracing provisions carefully. If separate property, income from separate property, proceeds, reinvested proceeds, and property purchased with separate funds are all intended to receive the same treatment, the agreement should actually say so.
Make definitions and operative provisions work together. Giving something a label does not necessarily determine its legal treatment elsewhere in the agreement.
For substantial estates, these issues can have consequences many years after the agreement is signed.
How Could Liz L. Apply in Other Massachusetts Divorces?
Consider a spouse who signed a prenuptial agreement in 2005 providing that the other spouse “will receive alimony” under a specified formula but giving no termination date.
If the parties divorce today, it may be incorrect simply to assume that the Alimony Reform Act’s current retirement provisions supply the missing termination date. Under Liz L., the language of the agreement and the law incorporated when it was executed would need careful examination.
Now consider a spouse who owned a family business before marriage. The prenup protects the original business interest and all proceeds from a sale of that interest. During the marriage, the spouse uses ordinary salary or another source of money to acquire additional shares.
Whether the new shares are protected may depend on how the agreement defines separate property and later-acquired assets. The fact that both sets of shares involve the same company does not necessarily answer the question.
Or suppose trust distributions are expressly defined as separate property and the recipient uses those distributions to purchase real estate.
Whether the real estate remains separate can depend on whether the agreement protects property purchased with trust distributions, rather than merely protecting the distributions themselves.
These are precisely the kinds of distinctions Liz L. tells lawyers and litigants not to overlook.
Does Liz L. v. Ursel U. Affect Your Divorce?
Possibly, particularly if your divorce involves an older prenuptial agreement, a surviving agreement, alimony, family wealth, trusts, or business interests.
But the case should not be treated as a shortcut to an outcome.
The Appeals Court repeatedly relied on the actual wording of this particular agreement. A different agreement may incorporate future law, establish an express alimony termination date, define replacement assets differently, or expressly protect additional property acquired during the marriage.
The practical lesson is therefore less “this case guarantees a particular result” and more “read the agreement before assuming the current statute supplies the answer.”
Frequently Asked Questions About Liz L. v. Ursel U.
Does the Alimony Reform Act Apply to Every Prenuptial Agreement Signed Before 2012?
No. Liz L. holds that later-enacted laws ordinarily do not become part of an earlier agreement unless the agreement establishes an intention to incorporate future changes in law. Whether the Alimony Reform Act applies therefore depends on the language and legal nature of the particular agreement and obligation.
Does a Prenuptial Agreement Have to Say Alimony Is “Indefinite” for It to Continue Indefinitely?
No. In Liz L., the agreement contained no express alimony termination date, but the Appeals Court concluded that its mandatory payment language and provision for renegotiating the amount “from time to time” established an obligation of indefinite duration. That conclusion depended on the agreement as a whole.
Does Alimony Always End When the Paying Spouse Reaches Full Retirement Age in Massachusetts?
No. Although G.L. c. 208, § 49(f) generally provides a retirement-age termination rule for general term alimony, not every alimony obligation is governed by that provision in the same way. Older judgments and surviving agreements can require different analysis, as both Liz L. and the recent Popp v. Popp decision demonstrate.
Can a Massachusetts Prenup Protect Business Interests Acquired During the Marriage?
Yes, a properly drafted prenuptial agreement can define and protect business interests, including interests acquired during the marriage. Liz L. shows, however, that an asset must actually fit the agreement’s operative definitions and tracing rules before a court will treat it as protected property.
If Income From Separate Property Is Separate, Is Everything Purchased With That Income Also Separate?
Not necessarily. In Liz L., the agreement expressly classified income from separate property as separate, but it did not automatically classify every asset purchased with that income the same way. The agreement’s provisions concerning proceeds and replacement assets required a different tracing analysis.
What Is the Difference Between a Surviving and Merged Agreement?
A surviving agreement retains independent contractual significance after the divorce judgment, while a merged provision becomes part of the court’s judgment and is generally subject to the legal rules governing modification of judgments. In Liz L., the agreement expressly survived, which was central to the Appeals Court’s treatment of the alimony obligation.
Did the Appeals Court Decide How Much Alimony the Wife Will Ultimately Receive?
No. The Appeals Court vacated the relevant alimony and property-division provisions and remanded the case for further proceedings. It also permitted the trial judge to reconsider the alimony amount if the additional property awarded to the wife generates increased income. The existing alimony order remains in effect as a temporary order during the remand unless the judge orders otherwise.
Final Thoughts
Liz L. v. Ursel U. is one of the more consequential Massachusetts family law decisions of 2026 because it connects several areas of law that are often considered separately.
It addresses the contractual nature of prenuptial agreements, the effect of subsequent changes in alimony law, the difference between reserving a right and creating an affirmative obligation, the significance of merger and survival, the classification and tracing of complex assets, and the relationship between property division and alimony.
For lawyers drafting agreements, the message is clear: definitions matter, tracing provisions matter, future-law clauses matter, and words as simple as “will,” “may,” and “shall” can have consequences decades later.
For people already bound by an agreement, the lesson may be even more important. The current Massachusetts statute is not necessarily the beginning and end of the analysis. Before determining what a spouse will receive, what property will be divided, or when an obligation ends, the actual agreement must be read carefully and in context.
The Appeals Court’s decision also reinforces a broader theme running through Massachusetts family law: sophisticated financial cases often turn not on broad slogans about “marital” or “separate” property, but on the precise legal source of a right, the language that created it, and the evidence showing how assets were acquired.
If you have a prenuptial agreement and are considering divorce, or if alimony or complex property division is likely to be disputed, Turco Legal’s Massachusetts divorce and family law attorneys can review the agreement and help you understand how it interacts with current Massachusetts law and recent appellate decisions. Our Boston divorce attorneys also represent clients in Boston and throughout Suffolk County in complex divorce and family law matters.
To discuss your circumstances, call (617) 657-4878 or schedule a free phone or Zoom consultation online.
About the Author: Damian Turco is the Founder and Managing Partner of Turco Legal and has practiced divorce and family law since 2008.
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