Burkle Divorce Pact Valid
A California appellate court ruled Thursday that billionaire Ronald W. Burkle did not trick his wife into signing a post-marital agreement that limited her divorce settlement to roughly $40 million.
Janet E. Burkle, who married Ronald Burkle in 1974 and signed the agreement in 1997, challenged its validity, saying he had defrauded her into signing away her rights to perhaps as much as $1 billion. Forbes magazine this year estimated the wealth of the Los Angeles-based independent investor, who made his fortune buying, selling and merging supermarket chains, at $2.3 billion.
The fraud allegation was a key component of the couple’s contentious breakup, which also triggered court and legislative battles over whether the divorce records should be kept secret.
Ronald Burkle lost his effort to keep his divorce records private on Wednesday, when the California Supreme Court declined to hear his appeal of a lower court ruling that the records must be made public. But he won another battle Thursday when the state appeals court rejected the claims by Janet Burkle that she was so depressed and emotionally dependent on him when she signed the post-marital financial accord that she did not do so of her own free will.
The court also rejected her claim that he deceived her by hiding some of his assets -- most importantly the fact that he was about to conclude his most lucrative deal to date, the merger of Food4Less and Fred Meyer and Hughes.
The deal was publicly announced the day after she signed the agreement.
Ronald Burkle testified at a hearing in Superior Court that she knew the merger was in the works. The appellate court ruling upheld the finding of a private jurist, retired Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Stephen Lachs, who presided at the lower court hearing.
Burkle claimed the couple had started effectively living separate lives in 1992. In 1997, when she signed the accord, Janet Burkle had already filed for divorce, but the couple had reconciled at his urging.
Along with its ruling Thursday, the Court of Appeal opened its files in the case and made public dozens of volumes of briefs and testimony that had been sealed.
In addition to the list of Burkle family assets, the files revealed a great deal of information Ronald Burkle had fought to keep private, including:
* Photocopies of family photographs, including those of the Burkles’ three children, one of whom is a minor and whom Ronald Burkle has said he fears could be kidnapped.
* Photocopies of checks from a joint account that Ronald Burkle has said he fears could aid criminals interested in identity theft.
* Many intimate details of Burkle family life.
The court also released the actual post-marital accord. That 1997 agreement details what Burkle then valued as $60 million worth of community property that he said had been accumulated before the alleged 1992 separation. He said he had accumulated an additional $86 million of his own property since 1992, court records show.
Janet Burkle, who had her own lawyer and accountants at the time, went along with his accounting and essentially agreed to split his community property and obtain some other benefits, such as payment of all her living expenses plus $1 million a year.
Ronald Burkle testified that the agreement suited both of them, because she was interested in security and he wanted to be free to continue making risky investments.
The Burkles separated again in 2002. She filed for divorce a second time in 2003 and challenged the legitimacy of the agreement. Dennis Wasser, Ronald Burkle’s attorney, said his client was “happy the Court of Appeal justices decided the case on its merits,” adding that, “after receiving benefits of the settlement agreement for several years, Mrs. Burkle simply decided she wanted more.”
