Appeals court: Judge in divorce case has power to bar ex from going into business against former spouse

The Massachusetts Appeals Court today gave a probate judge permission to block a Cape woman from setting up a competitor to her ex-husband's feed and grain business as part of the divorce settlement.

The ruling does not mean the woman will now have to give up the feed and grain she set up - in the same building from which her husband's concern was evicted on her request - only that the judge in the case will have the legal authority to reconsider the husband's request that she be forced to knock it off.

The husband was awarded control of the family feed and grain business in divorce proceedings in 2009. To keep the concern going, he asked the judge to block his soon-to-be ex, a veterinarian, from setting up a competing feed and grain.

The judge denied the request, saying he had no legal basis to make such a ruling. The wife promptly set out to take on her ex in the sale of agricultural products.

He appealed to the state's second highest court. The justices had to reach for their Maine lawbooks to find an analogous case - there had been no similar cases before in Massachusetts. But the court concluded Massachusetts law gives probate judges the power to do what they feel they have to to protect the interests of people before them:

[T]he equity powers of a probate judge are 'broad and flexible, and extend to actions necessary to afford any relief in the best interests of a person under their jurisdiction.

So the justices handed the case back to the lower judge to reconsider.

• Complete ruling, Marina W. Cesar vs. Richard R. Sundelin