Dukin’ Out a Divorce With DNA

Erle Stanley Gardner might have called it “The Case of the Priapic Prenup.” Agatha Christie might have named it “The Mystery of the Stained Bedsheets.” Players in a game of Clue might see it as “Wife No. 4.” In the Vermont farmhouse. With a lab report.”

In real life, it’s Nanette Sexton Bailey vs. Richard Briggs Bailey--a unique divorce dispute between a West Palm Beach, Fla., horsewoman and her wealthy, 74-year-old husband that blends all the elements of a classic mystery (wealth, sex, suspicion) with the highly unusual use of DNA analysis to supplement the efforts of a private eye.

Last year Bailey promised--in an amended prenuptial agreement--that he would pay Sexton roughly $20,000 a month in alimony if he ever cheated on her. This year she sought to prove that he had cheated, using a laboratory analysis of suspicious-looking stains on their bedsheet.

Some view her efforts as ingenious and groundbreaking. It is highly unusual to find a case that uses DNA analysis to prove infidelity or to affect the distribution of property in a divorce, says Charles Shainberg, president of the American Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers. “I’ve certainly never heard of one before,” he says. Others say the Harvard-educated Sexton is trying to trick her mentally confused husband out of millions.

The saga began in 1993 when Sexton, then 50, married Bailey, the former president, chairman and director of Massachusetts Financial Services, the nation’s oldest mutual fund company. As each had been married before (it was his fourth marriage, her third) and each was wealthy (his net worth totaled $11.1 million, hers $2.7 million), they drew up a prenuptial agreement in which she waived all claims for alimony.

According to her attorney Joel Weissman, things began to change in November 1998 when Sexton began to suspect her husband of philandering. He told her he was going to spend Thanksgiving with his son in Massachusetts, but instead, Weissman said, Bailey wound up in Pawtucket, R.I., where his third wife lives. He told Sexton he didn’t know how he got there.

In January 1999, the couple agreed to add what Weissman calls a “bad boy” clause to their prenuptial agreement stating that Bailey would pay Sexton alimony--the rough equivalent spent on her in 1997--if she ever divorced him for infidelity, desertion, abuse or nonsupport. The obligation would continue after his death or if he became mentally disabled.

Six months later, Weissman says, Sexton suddenly started receiving faxes from Bailey, who was sending them from his horse farm in Woodstock, Vt., asking her to detail her day-to-day whereabouts.

Again suspicious, Sexton joined him at the Vermont estate where she discovered several clues: a lacy nightgown in the bathroom, unfamiliar hair in the sink--and on the king-size beige Wamsutta bedsheet, the telltale stains of sexual activity.

Sexton collected the hair, the gown, the sheet and a washcloth, placed them in a bank vault and sent them to a Denver laboratory for DNA testing. The lab report, entered as admissible evidence in the case, confirmed her belief: The sheet stains came from semen and vaginal fluid. Sexton was excluded as a donor to the stains; Bailey was not.

Matrimonial lawyers say they have never heard of a case in which DNA has been used to prove infidelity in a divorce case. Weissman is making the rounds of TV news and reality shows because, he says, Sexton wants to give hope to other victims of infidelity.

A representative for Bailey’s family says the lawyer is not so altruistic. In late December, the source says, Weissman called one of Bailey’s attorneys and left a voice message saying he would appear on the shows unless Bailey would settle the case for more than $2 million.

Weissman said his client was upset that Bailey’s lawyers had made public comments chargingthat she was in it for the money and that she had coerced her husband into signing the amendment. “The truth was [that] he was disloyal to her and he needed to own up to it,” Weissman said. “If she could settle the case, the interviews wouldn’t obviously be germane.” He did not deny that a figure of more than $2 million had been discussed.

Sexton is unavailable for interviews, he said. Bailey is now hospitalized and unable to speak for himself, according to a family representative.

Bailey’s lawyers, who are not making public statements, have denied all of Sexton’s allegations and downplayed the significance of the lab report. “At most, it would prove that the husband slept in his own bed, hardly a remarkable event,” one of Bailey’s lawyers, Bruce Christensen of Miami, has said in court papers.

Rather, his lawyers are focusing on the prenuptial amendment. They contend that Bailey is mentally incompetent and was at the time he signed the papers, which would invalidate the agreement. A family representative says Bailey has suffered from Alzheimer’s disease for at least five years and has been incompetent for the last three.

The family and lawyers deny Sexton’s assertion that Bailey’s memory lapses are due to alcoholism.

Before the court looks at the adultery, it will consider whether Bailey was mentally competent when he signed the amended prenuptial agreement. A trial is set to begin May 14 in West Palm Beach.

Even if the whole matter ends there, Weissman believes his client has changed forever the nature of sleuthing in cases of infidelity.

“Now,” he says, “everyone has to worry about their bedsheets.”