Tuesday, June 9, 2026
Page 1
Court of Appeal:
Man Not Freed From Mortgage by Assigning Debts to Wife
By a MetNews Staff Writer
Div. One of the First District Court of Appeal has held that although a marital settlement agreement provided that the wife would be awarded the marital home and would be responsible for “all debts thereon,” there was no implied obligation that the husband’s name be removed from the mortgage.
The law disfavors a recognition of implied terms in contracts, Presiding Justice James M. Humes said in Friday’s opinion affirming a judgment by Mendocino Superior Court Judge Patrick M. Pekin. Interpreting the parties’ memorandum of understanding (“MOU”), the trial judge denied the bid by Jason McConnell for a proviso in the judgment that his ex-wife, Suzanne Jahnke, assume the mortgage as sole obligor,
McConnell argued on appeal that the language of the MOU evidences that “the parties unambiguously intended to give Suzanne sole ownership of, and legal responsibility for, both the property and the debt,” adding:
“The fact that the MOU does not specifically describe a mechanism or deadline for removing Jason from the debt is of no moment since the only way to effectuate the just-described intent of the parties is for Suzanne to take him off the debt….In other words, specifying a mechanism or deadline in the MOU was unnecessary since the parties necessarily understood that removing Jason from the debt—regardless of the precise mechanism for doing so—is the only way to carry out their intent that Suzanne own the debt and to prevent him from future liability for it.”
Rejecting that reasoning, Humes said:
“McConnell does not adequately explain why requiring Jahnke to remove his name from the mortgage—which, depending on the lender’s response, would potentially entail refinancing the mortgage or even paying it off entirely—was the only way to ensure performance of the term making her responsible for that debt. As Jahnke observes, a person may remain liable to a creditor even if a debt is assigned to that persons spouse, but the person has a right of reimbursement under Family Code section 916, subdivision (b), if the spouse fails to pay the debt. In other words, the award of a previously joint debt to one spouse does not require the underlying contractual obligations to be reconfigured, and we agree with the trial court that the parties were presumably aware of this principle.”
McConnell also contended:
“Even if this Court finds that the terms of the MOU contain some ambiguity regarding the intent of the parties to have Suzanne take Jason off the debt awarded to her, it should still find that the trial court abused its discretion in failing to resolve that ambiguity by considering Jason’s proffered extrinsic evidence on the parties’ intent. Although the lower court found that the MOU unequivocally does not impose a requirement on Suzanne to remove Jason from the debt…, the language in the MOU which made the debt Suzanne’s separate property is at the very least ambiguous as it is reasonably susceptible to Jason’s interpretation that it does impose this requirement on her.” Humes responded: “[W]e have already concluded that the MOU unambiguously did not require Jahnke to remove McConnell from the mortgage. Put another way, the term awarding Jahnke the home and the debts thereon is not reasonably susceptible to McConnell’s contrary interpretation, which would require us to read an unnecessary requirement into the contract. As a result, the trial court did not err by declining to consider extrinsic evidence of the parties’ intent on this issue.”
In an unpublished portion of the opinion, Humes said that Pekin did not err in declining to incorporate oral stipulations in the judgment.
The case is Marriage of McConnell v. Jahnke, 2026 S.O.S. 1677.
Copyright 2026, Metropolitan News Company