In Hall v. Hall, the trial court denied the Husband’s motion to declare that the parties’ MSA was incomplete. The evidence presented did not support his claim of incompleteness. It appears that he was merely complaining that he made a bad deal. The fact that one party to an agreement apparently made a bad bargain is not a sufficient ground, by itself, to vacate or modify a settlement agreement. The critical test in determining the validity of marital agreements is whether there was fraud or overreaching on one side, or, assuming unreasonableness, whether the challenging spouse did not have adequate knowledge of the marital property and income of the parties at the time the agreement was reached. A bad fiscal bargain that appears unreasonable can be knowledgeably entered into for reasons other than insufficient knowledge of assets and income. There may be a desire to leave the marriage for reasons unrelated to the parties’ fiscal position. If an agreement that is unreasonable is ly entered into, it is enforceable. Courts, however, must recognize that parties to a marriage are not dealing at arm’s length, and, consequently, trial judges must carefully examine the circumstances to determine the validity of these agreements.
The trial court also refused to allow the Husband to amend his Answer. Refusal to allow an amendment is an abuse of the trial court’s discretion ‘unless it clearly appears that allowing the amendment would prejudice the opposing party, the privilege to amend has been abused, or amendment would be futile. Because (1) it is not clear that allowing Former Husband leave to amend would have prejudiced Former Wife; (2) Former Husband did not abuse the privilege to amend; and (3) allowing him leave to amend would not have been in vain, the trial court abused its discretion by denying Former Husband leave to amend his answer.