A Carluzzo Rochkind & Smith note: Following is an excellent article by Virginia Lawyers Weekly. We did not handle this case, but it brings up important points your divorce lawyers should be familiar with. For more than 30 years our divorce lawyers in Manassas have helped clients with such matters in Prince William County, Fairfax County, Woodbridge, and throughout Northern Virginia. If you have any questions or would like to schedule an appointment, please contact our law firm at (703) 361-0776.
Wife who abandoned marriage not entitled to husband’s inheritance
By Virginia Lawyers Weekly – 12/9/2025
In brief
- Court of Appeals of Virginia upheld ruling that wife abandoned the marriage
- Wife’s conduct, separate residence and new relationship supported abandonment finding
- Court held abandonment bars elective share under Va. Code § 64.2-308.3
Despite not being legally divorced, a wife seeking to determine her elective share of her deceased husband’s estate was found to have “abandoned” the marriage and forfeited her interest in the estate under Virginia law, the Court of Appeals of Virginia has held.
The decision in Teel v. Teel (VLW 025-7-329) affirmed a decision from the Montgomery County Circuit Court, which issued a letter opinion finding the wife “willfully abandoned the marital relationship… and is therefore barred from an elective share of [the husband’s] estate.”
Under the decedent’s will, his entire estate was bequeathed to his brother, the appellee in Teel and the estate’s executor.
“Here, there is abundant evidence that [wife’s] conduct demonstrated a ‘termination of the normal indicia of a marital relationship combined with an intent to abandon the marital relationship,’” Judge Frank K. Friedman wrote for the appeals court.
Friedman’s opinion was joined by Judges Clifford L. Athey Jr. and Lisa M. Lorish.
Attorneys for the decedent’s brother declined to provide comment for this story but told Virginia Lawyers Weekly that they did not anticipate any further filings in the case.
Attorneys for the wife did not respond to requests for comment by deadline.
But according to Tysons Corner trusts and estates attorney Tom Repczynski, the decision “underscores the value of including language … as to what might or might not constitute abandonment for purposes of [pre- and post-marital agreements].”
“As the Teel court noted in its opinion, how a couple defines ‘an intent to abandon the normal indicia’ of their marital relationship is both subjective and directly relevant to the question as to whether a spouse has abandoned their personal marital relationship,” he added.
Living apart
Sue and Gene Teel were married in 1988. They had no children and owned two houses together.
According to testimony, the couple had separated “by mutual agreement” by July 2016, as they “fought the entire time that [they] lived together.” The wife lived in one home while the husband lived in another. The pair split the bills for utilities and shared joint custody over a pair of Schnauzers they adopted in November 2016.
The wife testified that the couple texted a lot and “were still friends” but never discussed getting back together following their separation. Despite this, the wife “did not see a need to be divorced” and the husband did not file for divorce before his death.
In December 2016, the wife began a romantic relationship that was ongoing at the time of trial. The relationship was made public on social media, and the husband reportedly said “I hope he treats you well” when informed of the new relationship.
The husband remained on the wife’s health insurance when he became ill. The wife testified that she visited him almost daily while he was in the hospital and cleaned his house when he was ill, but that his family took over most of the caregiving when he became sick. The husband died in March 2022.
Witnesses for the brother painted a different portrait of the couple’s relationship, according to the opinion. Nine witnesses testified that the husband was “very, very sad” when discussing the wife’s new relationship and that she was not often present during his illness and was not one of his emergency contacts.
The husband’s in-home caregivers testified that the wife was “not involved in Bull’s care” towards the end of his life.
In March 2023, the wife filed a complaint to determine her elective share of the husband’s estate. The brother objected, claiming she abandoned the marriage.
After a bench trial in 2024, the trial court held in the brother’s favor, finding “that [n]either party cared for the other in the typical marital sense and neither party fulfilled matrimonial duties.”
The wife appealed.
No elective share
Under Va. Code § 64.2-308.3(A), a surviving spouse has a right to an elective share equivalent to 50% “of the value of the marital-property portion of the augmented estate,” unless that spouse is found to have willfully deserted or abandoned the deceased spouse.
Friedman, citing Purce v. Patterson, wrote that abandonment “is a mixed question of law and fact.” In Purce, the Supreme Court of Virginia defined abandonment as generally synonymous with “desertion,” defined as “a breach of matrimonial duty – an actual breaking off of the matrimonial cohabitation coupled with an intent to desert in the mind of the deserting party.”
“Of course, not every marriage will look alike, and not every couple will define their marriage in the same way,” Friedman wrote, adding that determining “the normal indicia” of a marital relationship requires looking at the relationship prior to the alleged abandonment.
“After all, ‘there exists no single, monolithic matrimonial duty, [and] the practical obligations that accompany marital life are manifold,’” he wrote, quoting the Court of Appeals decision Payne v. Payne.
Looking to Purce, Friedman wrote that a court can find a spouse abandoned a marriage under the relevant code even if the separation is mutual, if the relevant evidence shows “the surviving spouse’s ‘conduct showed a lack of support for [the other spouse] and the marital relationship.’”
Here, the appellate court found that the trial court’s findings of fact were not plainly wrong nor lacking in evidentiary support.
“Here, there was ample evidence that Sue intended to abandon the normal indicia of the couple’s marriage – and that she retained that intent through Bull’s death,” Friedman wrote. The judge noted that the couple lived in separate homes and saw each other infrequently, and the wife “had, at best, a very minor role in caring for Bull during his terminal illness”
Crucially, Friedman noted the separate romantic relationship the wife began months after the separation “caused Bull great pain” according to witness testimony – a conclusion that the court said was borne out by the husband’s will, which left his estate solely to his brother.
“The fact that Sue and Bull never got legally divorced, referenced heavily throughout Sue’s brief, cannot be dispositive of whether she had abandoned the marriage under Code § 64.2-308.14(E),” Friedman wrote. “After all, that code section can only apply where there has been no divorce.”
While the evidence showed a cordial relationship between the pair, the court concluded that the record supported the finding that the wife had abandoned the marital relationship, and thus relinquished her elective share of the augmented estate.
What can be done
Repczynski said this case, coupled with similar cases on the issue, makes clear necessity of factoring in the “financial consequences of leaving potential inheritance issues unresolved.”
“A couple can draft around the impact of Teel, to the extent they are prepared to commit to their own definition of abandonment at the time of entering into such an agreement,” he said. “Purce already definitively established for us that the fault factor in the domestic relations context does not carry over to the elective share context where ‘a mutual separation does not foreclose a finding of abandonment.’”
Noting the legal enforceability of pre-marital and post-marital agreements, Repczynski said that it is clear parties have the ability to draft around the default rule.
“[A] couple’s mutually defined understanding of an intent to abandon the marriage would afford a trier-of-fact the objective indicia of subjective intent needed to minimize, if not eliminate completely, any second-guessing when one of the two is deceased and no longer able to testify as to whether he or she believed the marriage abandoned,” he said.
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