“Nature holds the key to our aesthetic, intellectual, cognitive and even spiritual satisfaction.” – E. O. Wilson
LAKEPORT, Calif. – Lakeport's lovely Library Park is a world unto itself, sitting on three sprawling acres at 222 Park St.
While sitting on one of the many park benches, Clear Lake appears to effortlessly expand its shores with a view of Mount Konocti in the distance.
It's not hard to imagine what stories that sacred mountain could tell, if only it could.
Mount Konocti, a dormant volcano, erupted 300,000 to 600,000 years ago. This unique land formation played a special part in Lake County's Indian mythologies.
A stroll in Library Park reveals towering weeping willows. These provide cooling shade along the shores.
The park is home to a variety of flowering trees, including elegant dogwood trees.
Here at Library Park you will find a place to launch your kayak, you may take a swim, hold a barbecue, and the children may enjoy the playground structures.
Entertainment, in the form of music performances is frequently held in the park's handsome gazebo.
Many intriguing discoveries can be made in this little corner of our county.
The park's namesake is derived from the historic Carnegie Library building that graces the entrance on Park Street.
It opened its doors on Feb. 18, 1918. When space became limited in the Carnegie Library, Lakeport gained a new county library in 1986.
Since Lake County's Carnegie Library met the numerous criteria for historic value, it was listed on the National Parks Service's National Register of Historic Places.
In Library Park one can be privy to the voluminous heaving of cloud cover one minute, witness a pair of grebes rushing in another instant, then, without warning you may be privy to the loud language and comings and goings of the nesting black-crowned night herons in the park's trees.
Follow Library Park's Facebook page for updates about activities.
Kathleen Scavone, M.A., is a retired educator, potter, writer and author of “Anderson Marsh State Historic Park: A Walking History, Prehistory, Flora, and Fauna Tour of a California State Park” and “Native Americans of Lake County.” She also writes for NASA and JPL as one of their “Solar System Ambassadors.” She was selected “Lake County Teacher of the Year, 1998-99” by the Lake County Office of Education, and chosen as one of 10 state finalists the same year by the California Department of Education.
With accomplished director James Wan once again at the helm of a supernatural thriller, “The Conjuring 2” brings the same feeling of dread that permeated the original story of paranormal investigators Ed and Lorraine Warren doing their best to help a family in need.
To say that “The Conjuring 2” is a sequel to the first film would be akin to calling “The Amityville Horror,” the 1979 original, a sequel to 1973’s “The Exorcist.” The only common denominator is the existence of pure evil in a ghostly state.
“The Conjuring 2” is described as “based upon a true story,” and indeed, there is plenty of documentation, through various means, that something terribly wrong was happening at a council house in North London back in 1977.
Others may claim that it would be more appropriate to say “loosely based” on a true story at best, if not to describe the events as a hoax or, at the very least, a fabrication built upon a series of unexplained incidents that don’t merit a mystical designation.
But first, the film opens with Ed and Lorraine Warren (Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga), who considered themselves demonologists rather than ghost hunters while conducting a postmortem séance at the Long Island house where the Amityville haunting unfolded.
The traumatic experience of confronting a demonic vision during this dinner table communication with the dead causes Lorraine to thereafter continuously sense the apparition of a malevolent force that represents pure evil.
With the effects of Long Island still haunting them, the Warrens come out of a self-imposed sabbatical in late 1977 and travel to England to take on a vile demonic entity that has taken root in the home of single mom Peggy Hodgson (Frances O’Connor) and her four children.
Apparently, the Warrens are unable to resist a case of children in peril. The two oldest children are the first to encounter the strange events. In particular, 11-year-old Janet (Madison Wolfe) suffers the greatest harm from a ghostly force intent on frightening everyone.
Janet’s 13-year old sister Margaret (Lauren Esposito), sharing the same bedroom, is also most directly affected by the onset of mystical happenings, witnessing her sibling’s nightmares and eventual levitations as well as the strange noises and moving of objects.
The two younger brothers, 10-year-old Johnny (Patrick McAuley) and 7-year-old Billy (Benjamin Haigh) are also tormented by a ghostlike creature that calls itself Bill Wilkins and insists with great malice in his voice that the Hodgson family must leave his house.
Prior to the arrival of the Warrens, the Hodgson home had attracted the attention of the media and had been frequented by police, with one officer, Carolyn Heeps, filing a report stating unequivocally that she witnessed a chair moving across the room on its own power.
Others coming to the scene of the unexplained happenings included parapsychologist Anita Gregory (Franka Potente), a skeptic who is unmoved by any evidence of the mystical, and paranormal investigator Maurice Grosse (Simon McBurney), who finds reason to believe.
The necessity of intervention brings the Warrens to the house, first for the purpose of obtaining enough proof of demonic possession that they would be able to convince the Catholic Church of the essential obligation to conduct an exorcism.
As to be expected in a well-crafted horror film, which James Wan is perfectly suited to achieve, the suspense builds nicely as the strange occurrences take on greater menace with the ghost possessing Janet such that he gives voice to the irrational complaints of a bitter old man.
Though care is taken to record Janet’s possessed voice, skeptics continue to suggest the Hodgson family had created an elaborate hoax, either for publicity or fortune, which if the latter were true, you’d think a move to a nicer home would have happened with haste.
Perhaps the most compelling aspect of the terror on display is that even the Warrens, experienced as they were in dealing with the paranormal, demonstrated fear in the face of an element of danger that could have come from a demonic force.
To be sure, there is no need to have seen “The Conjuring,” which was set in a haunted Rhode Island farmhouse, while this second film is a wholly different story in a foreign land. Both films, though, rely on suspense and scares rather than unrelenting gore and blood.
The saving grace for “The Conjuring 2” is that the characters are uniformly interesting as they grapple with the extremely disturbing events. Moreover, it’s a scary movie without going overboard. It’s likely to prove to be one of the best horror movies of the year.
Tim Riley writes film and television reviews for Lake County News.
LAKE COUNTY, Calif. – California summers are an exciting time to enjoy traveling, vacations and road trips.
Many people consider the summer months a perfect opportunity to spend time with family and friends. During this time, vehicle traffic increases and so do the temperatures.
The California Highway Patrol wants everyone to have a safe and enjoyable summer. However, driving safely during the summer months requires some preparation.
“No matter how much you prepare for your road trip, something can always go wrong,” said CHP Commissioner Joe Farrow. “By following a few simple safety tips, motorists can help minimize the risks associated with travel.”
The CHP encourages motorists to be prepared to manage the summer heat by adhering to a few safety tips:
– Never leave children or animals unattended in a vehicle. It only takes minutes for the interior temperature of a vehicle to reach dangerous levels and have tragic results.
– Make sure your vehicle is ready for summer travel. Check your vehicle’s tires and radiator system. Summer temperatures place extra demands on your vehicle and it should be properly checked to ensure safe travels.
– Be prepared. Even well-maintained vehicles break down sometimes. Carry an emergency kit, water, cellular telephone and charger, jumper cables, flashlight with extra batteries, a good spare tire and a jack.
– Get directions to your destination and check the road and weather conditions in advance. Consult travel applications on your mobile phone or visit either the CHP’s or California Department of Transportation’s Web site.
– Buckle up! Make sure everyone in your vehicle is wearing a seat belt. Young children must be properly buckled in a car seat or booster seat.
– Check your surroundings for children, pets, or other pedestrians before backing out of a garage or driveway. Driver visibility can be significantly reduced on sport utility vehicles, trucks and other large vehicles.
The mission of the California Highway Patrol is to provide the highest level of safety, service and security to the people of California.
Curtis, Tina and Tenae Stewart would like to take this opportunity to thank all the good people of Lake County who supported our family and businesses for 23-plus years.
The Valley fire took it all from us.
We have all relocated to Sonoma County to be close to family, sold our property and sold Middletown Florist & Gifts, now the new owners can make new memories.
Not everyone is on Facebook and we feel we have left a lot of wonderful friends in the dark and we want to let them know we are OK, moving forward with life and making new memories, too.
If anyone would like to get in contact with us our new mailing address is P.O. Box 3952, Santa Rosa CA 95402.
A simulation of the powerful jets generated by supermassive black holes at the centers of the largest galaxies explains why some burst forth as bright beacons visible across the universe, while others fall apart and never pierce the halo of the galaxy.
About 10 percent of all galaxies with active nuclei – all presumed to have supermassive black holes within the central bulge – are observed to have jets of gas spurting in opposite directions from the core. The hot ionized gas is propelled by the twisting magnetic fields of the rotating black hole, which can be as large as several billion suns.
A 40-year-old puzzle was why some jets are hefty and punch out of the galaxy into intergalactic space, while others are narrow and often fizzle out before reaching the edge of the galaxy.
The answer could shed light on how galaxies and their central black holes evolve, since aborted jets are thought to roil the galaxy and slow star formation, while also slowing the infall of gas that has been feeding the voracious black hole.
The model could also help astronomers understand other types of jets, such as those produced by individual stars, which we see as gamma-ray bursts or pulsars.
“Whereas it was rather easy to reproduce the stable jets in simulations, it turned out to be an extreme challenge to explain what causes the jets to fall apart,” said University of California, Berkeley theoretical astrophysicist Alexander Tchekhovskoy, a NASA Einstein postdoctoral fellow, who led the project. “To explain why some jets are unstable, researchers had to resort to explanations such as red giant stars in the jets' path loading the jets with too much gas and making them heavy and unstable so that the jets fall apart.”
By taking into account the magnetic fields that generate these jets, Tchekhovskoy and colleague Omer Bromberg, a former Lyman Spitzer Jr. postdoctoral fellow at Princeton University, discovered that magnetic instabilities in the jet determine their fate.
If the jet is not powerful enough to penetrate the surrounding gas, the jet becomes narrow or collimated, a shape prone to kinking and breaking.
When this happens, the hot ionized gas funneled through the magnetic field spews into the galaxy, inflating a hot bubble of gas that generally heats up the galaxy.
Powerful jets, however, are broader and able to punch through the surrounding gas into the intergalactic medium.
The determining factors are the power of the jet and how quickly the gas density drops off with distance, typically dependent on the mass and radius of the galaxy core.
The simulation, which agrees well with observations, explains what has become known as the Fanaroff-Riley morphological dichotomy of jets, first pointed out by Bernie Fanaroff of South Africa and Julia Riley of the U.K. in 1974.
“We have shown that a jet can fall apart without any external perturbation, just because of the physics of the jet,“ Tchekhovskoy said. He and Bromberg, who is currently at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in Israel, published their simulations on June 17 in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, a publication of Oxford University Press.
Bendable drills
The supermassive black hole in the bulging center of these massive galaxies is like a pitted olive spinning around an axle through the hole, Tchekhovskoy said.
If you thread a strand of spaghetti through the hole, representing a magnetic field, then the spinning olive will coil the spaghetti like a spring.
The spinning, coiled magnetic fields act like a flexible drill trying to penetrate the surrounding gas.
The simulation, based solely on magnetic field interactions with ionized gas particles, shows that if the jet is not powerful enough to punch a hole through the surrounding gas, the magnetic drill bends and, due to the magnetic kink instability, breaks.
An example of this type of jet can be seen in the galaxy M87, one of the closest such jets to Earth at a distance of about 50 million light-years, and has a central black hole equal to about 6 billion suns.
“If I were to jump on top of a jet and fly with it, I would see the jet start to wiggle around because of a kink instability in the magnetic field,“ Tchekhovskoy said.“If this wiggling grows faster than it takes the gas to reach the tip, then the jet will fall apart. If the instability grows slower than it takes for gas to go from the base to the tip of the jet, then the jet will stay stable.“
The jet in the galaxy Cygnus A, located about 600 million light-years from Earth, is an example of powerful jets punching through into intergalactic space.
Tchekhovskoy argues that the unstable jets contribute to what is called black hole feedback, that is, a reaction from the material around the black hole that tends to slow its intake of gas and thus its growth.
Unstable jets deposit a lot of energy within the galaxy that heats up the gas and prevents it from falling into the black hole. Jets and other processes effectively keep the sizes of supermassive black holes below about 10 billion solar masses, though UC Berkeley astronomers recently found black holes with masses near 21 billion solar masses.
Presumably these jets start and stop, lasting perhaps 10-100 million years, as suggested by images of some galaxies showing more than one jet, one of them old and tattered.
Evidently, black holes go through binging cycles, interrupted in part by the occasional unstable jet that essentialy takes away their food.
The simulations were run on the Savio computer at UC Berkeley, Darter at the National Institute for Computational Sciences at the University of Tennesee, Knoxville, and Stampede, Maverick and Ranch computers at the Texas Advanced Computing Center at the University of Texas at Austin.
The entire simulation took about 500 hours on 2,000 computer cores, the equivalent of 1 million hours on a standard laptop.
The researchers are improving their simulation to incorporate the smaller effects of gravity, buoyancy and the thermal pressure of the interstellar and intergalactic media.
The work was supported by NASA through Einstein Postdoctoral Fellowship grant number PF3-140115 awarded by the Chandra X-ray Center, operated by the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory for NASA under contract NAS8-03060, and the National Science Foundation through an XSEDE computational time allocation TG-AST100040.
Robert Sanders writes for the UC Berkeley News Center.
LAKE COUNTY, Calif. – This week at Lake County Animal Care and Control several big dogs and some small ones, too, are waiting for homes, just in time to kick off the summer with new families.
Dogs available this week to new homes include mixes of Chihuahua, Doberman Pinscher, Labrador Retriever, pit bull and terrier.
Dogs that are adopted from Lake County Animal Care and Control are either neutered or spayed, microchipped and, if old enough, given a rabies shot and county license before being released to their new owner. License fees do not apply to residents of the cities of Lakeport or Clearlake.
If you're looking for a new companion, visit the shelter. There are many great pets hoping you'll choose them.
In addition to the animals featured here, all adoptable animals in Lake County can be seen here: http://bit.ly/Z6xHMb .
The following dogs at the Lake County Animal Care and Control shelter have been cleared for adoption (additional dogs on the animal control Web site not listed are still “on hold”).
Pit bull terrier mix
This male pit bull terrier mix is now listed as urgent, having been available for adoption since May 11.
He has a short brown coat.
Shelter staff said he does not jump and is very friendly, walking well on a leash, showing no food aggression, and allowing handling of his mouth, ears, paws and tail with no problems. He also enjoys a good tummy rub.
He would do great in a home with no cats.
He's in kennel No. 28, ID No. 4850.
Pit bull mix
This female pit bull mix has a short black and white coat.
She will be available on June 20.
She's in kennel No. 13, ID No. 5083.
Chihuahua mix
This female Chihuahua mix has a short tan and white coat.
She's in kennel No. 20, ID No. 5068.
'Mom'
“Mom” is a female Labrador Retriever-Doberman Pinscher mix.
She has a pretty black and tan coat, and a sweet personality.
She's in kennel No. 22, ID No. 4917.
Male pit bull mix
This male pit bull mix has a short black coat with white markings on his chest and toes.
He's in kennel No. 29, ID No. 5004.
Terrier mix
This male terrier mix has a short, all-black coat.
Lake County Animal Care and Control is located at 4949 Helbush in Lakeport, next to the Hill Road Correctional Facility.
Office hours are Monday through Friday, 11 a.m. to 5 p.m., and 11 a.m. to 3 p.m., Saturday. The shelter is open from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. Monday through Friday and on Saturday from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m.
For more information call Lake County Animal Care and Control at 707-263-0278.
Email Elizabeth Larson at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. . Follow her on Twitter, @ERLarson, or Lake County News, @LakeCoNews.
LAKE COUNTY, Calif. – Esther Siegel of Redwood Valley will be inducted into a special group of senior dressage riders and horses on Saturday, June 25, at the Lake County Summer Dressage Show at Highland Springs Equestrian Center in Kelseyville.
The ages of Siegel and her horse, Harmony, qualify them to become members of The Dressage Foundation's Century Club.
The Century Club recognizes dressage riders and horses whose combined ages total 100 years or more.
Siegel is 65 and Harmony is 35.
In addition to having ages totaling 100 or more, horse and rider perform a dressage test of any level at a dressage show and are scored by a dressage judge.
The Dressage Foundation provides a Century Club ribbon and wall plaque to each horse and rider team. Local dressage clubs, family and friends help to make the ride into a celebratory event.
The Century Club was formed at The Dressage Foundation in 1996, at the suggestion of noted dressage judge and instructor, Dr. Max Gahwyler. The intent was to encourage older dressage riders to remain active in the sport.
Since that time, the Century Club has grown into a meaningful and popular endeavor and has more than 220 members to date.
Dressage is a word drawn from the French verb for “to train.” Dressage is both a method of training horses and a competitive sport, and is designed to develop correct movement in the horse.
For more information about The Dressage Foundation or the Century Club, please contact Jenny Johnson, executive director at 402-434-8585 or visit www.dressagefoundation.org .
Caltrans released new survey data this week that shows nearly half of all motorists surveyed admit to sometimes littering along the state’s highways.
Nearly one in five California motorists report intentionally dumping something on the side of the highway.
Survey respondents confirmed they improperly disposed of items ranging from old furniture and appliances to green waste from their yard such as lawn clippings, branches or leaves.
In addition, another 6 percent of motorists admitted that they fail to pick up waste left by pets on the side of the highway.
“These findings are staggering because this is not accidental public behavior, but rather a conscious decision to improperly discard or leave behind debris along California freeways,” said Caltrans Director Malcolm Dougherty. “These items create roadway hazards while also directly affecting the cleanliness of our highways and the waterways. When it rains, stormwater flushes highway debris and pollutants into the storm drain system flowing to open bodies of water.”
The quantitative survey was conducted to measure California highway drivers’ awareness, attitudes and behaviors when it comes to maintaining clean highways for the purposes of clean waterways.
The survey was conducted in February 2016 by ConsumerQuest Research. Responses were collected from more than 300 California drivers across the state age 18 years of age and older who had driven on California freeways or highways in the last 30 days.
Below are several additional survey findings:
· Making the connection: Overwhelmingly, 84 percent of Californians believe there is a connection between highway pollution and the quality of water. Virtually all of these motorists say that knowing this encourages them to maintain their vehicle properly and not litter or cause pollution on highways.
· Taking action: The primary action taken as a result of understanding the connection between roadway pollution and water quality is to avoid littering (30 percent), followed distantly by making sure there are no leaking fluids (14 percent).
· Tire maintenance: Only half of California motorists regularly check to make certain their tires are properly inflated. Perhaps more concerning is that nearly one in five California motorists report that they “go by how my vehicle feels,” are sometimes “not totally certain,” (how full their tires are) or “don’t really worry about this.”
· Leaky car fluids: Four in 10 motorists discovered a fluid leak from their vehicle in the past several years. While most repaired it immediately, a significant portion did not. Of those who discovered leaking fluids, 20 percent report waiting at least a few days to take action or topping off and not worrying about it.
Caltrans recently launched a new stormwater public education and outreach campaign called “Protect Every Drop” to educate Californians about the sources and pathways of stormwater pollution, including the items found to be improperly discarded during the survey.
The campaign encourages motorists to reduce the pollutants that affect water quality in California’s streams, rivers, lakes and coastal waters, in order to keep them drinkable, swimmable and fishable.
The campaign addresses several actions the public can take, including:
· Performing routine vehicle and tire maintenance, which reduces pollution from vehicles on the roadway.
· Properly disposing of trash and recycling.
· Securing and covering truckloads that may fall off or blow out during travel.
The campaign also addresses other pollutants found in highway stormwater that may originate from non-highway sources such as pesticides and bacteria from natural sources.
“The polluted water that runs off California highways discharges either to an adjacent city or county storm drain system, or to a stream, river or lake – and eventually to bays and the ocean,” said Ana Serrano, PE, Office of Stormwater Program Implementation, Division of Environmental Analysis at Caltrans. “We need every motorist to do their part to help keep California’s highways and waterways clean.”
Caltrans owns and operates storm drain systems along more than 50,000 lane miles of the state highway system, which discharge into every major watershed of the state.
Stormwater picks up pollution washed off vehicles and roadways when it rains, which makes its way through ditches and pipes that make up storm drain systems.
The comprehensive Caltrans Awareness, Attitudes and Behaviors Study Pre-Campaign Baseline Results can be found at www.protecteverydrop.com/resources .
Three crew members from the International Space Station returned to Earth at 5:15 a.m. EDT Saturday after wrapping up 186 days in space and several NASA research studies in human health.
Expedition 47 Commander Tim Kopra of NASA, flight engineer Tim Peake of the European Space Agency and Soyuz Commander Yuri Malenchenko of Roscosmos touched down southeast of the remote town of Dzhezkazgan in Kazakhstan.
The crew completed the in-flight portion of NASA human research studies in ocular health, cognition, salivary markers and microbiome. From the potential development of vaccines, to data that could be relevant in the treatment of patients suffering from ocular diseases, such as glaucoma, the research will help NASA prepare for human long-duration exploration while also benefiting people on Earth.
The three crew members also welcomed four cargo spacecraft, including one that delivered the Bigelow Expandable Activity Module (BEAM), an expandable habitat technology demonstration.
The BEAM, which arrived in April on the eighth SpaceX commercial resupply mission, was attached to the space station and expanded to its full size for analysis over the next two years.
The BEAM is an example of NASA’s increased commitment to partnering with industry to enable the growth of commercial space, and is co-sponsored by the agency’s Advanced Exploration Systems Division and Bigelow Aerospace.
Two Russian Progress cargo craft docked to the station in December and April, bringing tons of supplies. Kopra and Peake also led the grapple of Orbital ATK’s Cygnus spacecraft to the station in March, the company's fourth commercial resupply mission, and the SpaceX Dragon spacecraft in April.
During his time on the orbital complex, Kopra ventured outside for two spacewalks. The objective of the first spacewalk was to move the station’s mobile transporter rail car to a secure position.
On the second spacewalk, Kopra and Peake replaced a failed voltage regulator to restore power to one of the station’s eight power channels. Kopra now has 244 days in space on two flights, while Peake spent 186 days in space on this, his first, mission.
Having completed his sixth mission, Malenchenko now has spent 828 cumulative days in space, making him second on the all-time list behind Russian cosmonaut Gennady Padalka.
Expedition 48 continues on the station, with NASA astronaut Jeff Williams in command, with crewmates Oleg Skripochka and Alexey Ovchinin of the Russian space agency Roscosmos. The three-person crew will operate the station for three weeks until the arrival of three new crew members.
NASA astronaut Kate Rubins, Russian cosmonaut Anatoly Ivanishin and Takuya Onishi of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency are scheduled to launch July 6 (Eastern time) from Baikonur, Kazakhstan.
WASHINGTON, D.C. – U.S. Rep. Mike Thompson’s (CA-5) bipartisan provision requiring every American flag purchased by the Department of Defense (DOD) to be 100 percent manufactured in the United States, from articles, materials or supplies that are 100 percent grown, produced or manufactured in the United States, was passed by the House of Representatives on Thursday.
Thompson's provision passed as part of H.R. 5293, the DOD Appropriations Act of 2017.
The provision previously passed in the last Congress as part of H.R. 3547, the Fiscal Year (FY) 2014 consolidated appropriations bill, was signed into law by the president in January 2014, and was implemented by the Pentagon in 2015.
Thompson again introduced this provision to ensure its continued inclusion in DOD appropriations.
“I am proud to continue my efforts to ensure that every American flag the DOD buys is made in America, by American workers and with American products,” said Thompson. “This provision is commonsense. The brave men and women who serve our country in uniform should do so under an American-made flag.”
Specifically, Thompson's provision applies the Berry Amendment to the American flag.
The Berry Amendment, originally passed in 1941, prohibits DOD funds from being used to acquire food, clothing, military uniforms, fabrics, stainless steel and hand or measuring tools that are not grown or produced in the United States, except in rare exceptions.
Thompson's provision applies the same rules for the DOD's acquisition of American flags, which previously were not listed as a covered item.
Precedent already exists for such a provision. Currently, the Department of Veterans Affairs is required to only purchase U.S.-made American flags for servicemembers' funerals.
H.R. 5293 passed the House of Representatives by a vote of 282-138. The legislation will now go to the Senate for consideration.
Thompson represents California’s Fifth Congressional District, which includes all or part of Contra Costa, Lake, Napa, Solano and Sonoma counties.
In California, marital agreements allow couples an important opportunity to dictate their property rights and legal obligations to each other once married in ways that differ from what is otherwise provided under California's Community Property Law and Family Law.
They should be reviewed if the couple moves to another state.
Marital agreements can either be entered into before the couple gets married (premarital agreements) or after they are married (postmarital agreements).
Marital agreements take effect at death or divorce, as relevant.
Premarital and postmarital agreements are both contracts and as such must meet certain requirements under the law of contracts: They must be entered into voluntarily and without fraud, duress or coercion. A postmarital agreement must also meet higher standards.
As premarital agreements are executed prior to marriage the parties to the agreement do not yet owe each other a so-called “fiduciary duty,” one that requires them each to act "in the highest good faith and fair dealing" with respect to their dealings with each other.
Accordingly, under the fiduciary duty rule, a postmarital agreement that results in an unfair advantage to one spouse is presumed to be the result of undue influence and thus void.
Premarital agreements can, for example, be used to confirm one's property rights in each person's separate property and prevent the community estate (which belongs equally to both spouses) from gaining an interest in one spouse’s own separate property (either from before marriage or subsequently acquired inheritances), which otherwise could happen during the marriage when marital earnings or either spouse's labor (time and effort) is used to benefit the owning spouse's separate property.
Postmarital agreements can occur in the context of a marital reconciliation or as part of a marital separation.
They can involve the transmutation (change) in character of property rights and can affect estate planning purposes in a blended family when each spouse has their own children.
Since 2002 in California, marital agreements can also go beyond community property law issues and also address the issue of spousal support (e.g., alimony).
To be enforceable marital agreements must, unless a valid waiver is obtained in context of a premarital agreement, provide for full and fair disclosure of each party's assets, income and liabilities; must provide seven days for each side to review the agreement; and much involve separate legal counsel representing each party.
Full and fair disclosure can be difficult to achieve when asset valuations of hard to value assets are involved. Nonetheless, full and fair disclosure is essential to the enforceability of the agreement.
In addition, where spousal support is concerned, the agreement must not later be found by the divorce court to be unconscionable at the time of its enforcement. What is unconscionable is not yet well defined under California law.
That said, the more reasonable and fair a marital agreement is on the issue of spousal support, the more likely it is to be enforced. Thus, a provision limiting, but not waiving, spousal support is more likely to be enforced.
Marital agreements have limits: They cannot violate certain important public policies. Specifically, marital agreements cannot address child custody, child support, or religious upbringing; to cite some important public policies.
In conclusion, marital agreements cannot guarantee the intended results of the agreement. They have a much higher likelihood of success when each side has something to gain and something to lose by abiding by the agreement.
The best approach is for both sides to be fair and reasonable to one another and for each side to have their own legal counsel in negotiating the agreement.
Dennis A. Fordham, Attorney, is a State Bar-Certified Specialist in estate planning, probate and trust law. His office is at 870 S. Main St., Lakeport, Calif. He can be reached at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. and 707-263-3235. His Web site is www.DennisFordhamLaw.com .
“Nature holds the key to our aesthetic, intellectual, cognitive and even spiritual satisfaction.” – E. O. Wilson
