Written Agreements override Oral Vows

Both the Husband and Wife had strong Roman Catholic beliefs. The Husband was awarded legal custody, in large part because of the Wife’s insistence that the children be home schooled and not sent to school, not even a Catholic school. There was no evidence of religious discrimination against the wife, nor did the trial court show an unconstitutional antagonism toward Catholicism by characterizing the Wife’s unrelenting pursuit to home school her children as a “crusade.” The Wife contended that the trial court should have ceded its jurisdiction to a canonical court for resolution of all issues, including property issues, regarding the parties’ divorce, because she and her husband were married in the Catholic Church and both had agreed to be bound by Catholic canon law regarding their marriage and any issues regarding their children. However, the trial court properly refused the Wife’s request that the parties’ dispute be resolved by a Roman Catholic Diocesan Tribunal, because: (1) child custody disputes are not subject to arbitration; (2) there was no written agreement between Husband and Wife to arbitrate issues arising out of their marriage and any claimed oral agreement resulting from the Catholic marriage ceremony was barred by the Statute of Frauds requiring that agreements “made upon consideration of marriage” be in writing; and (3) even assuming that the parties did enter into an agreement to arbitrate their marital discord and property and debt issues, the Wife waived her right to pursue arbitration by her invocation of the court’s jurisdiction and by participation, for over a year, in proceedings before the court (Ohio Ct. App.)

from a large page of the Religion Case Reporter