Precedents Cited and Their Influence

• Szewczyk v. Continental Paving, 176 N.H. 148 (2023) and Adams v. Moose Hill Orchards, LLC, 2024 N.H. 58: Reiterated standards for motions to dismiss and how courts construe pleadings in the plaintiff’s favor while testing them against applicable law. These framed the threshold inquiry for the statute of limitations issue.
• RSA 508:2 (1968): Provided the twenty-year limitations period for actions “for the recovery of real estate.” The Court selected this statute over RSA 508:4 because the remedy sought — rescission of a deed and quieting title — is quintessentially about recovering an interest in land.
• Conrad v. Hazen, 140 N.H. 249 (1995): Guided the accrual analysis — a cause of action accrues when the plaintiff knew or reasonably should have known of the injury and its causal connection; the Court located accrual no later than July 1974.
• Bilden Properties, LLC v. Birin, 165 N.H. 253 (2013): Cited for “actual notice,” underscoring that the plaintiff had direct knowledge of her conveyance when she executed the quitclaim deed, and, at the latest, notice of its allegedly fraudulent inducement by July 1974.
• Tremblay v. Bald, 176 N.H. 439 (2024): Supplied the modern summary judgment standard — no genuine issue of material fact and entitlement to judgment as a matter of law.
• Bussey v. Bussey, 95 N.H. 349 (1949): The cornerstone equitable precedent expressing New Hampshire’s “manifest reluctance to disturb a final judgment of divorce,” particularly after a second marriage and the passage of time. Bussey supports the use of laches to bar collateral attacks, aligning with public policy favoring finality.
• Wood v. General Electric Co., 119 N.H. 285 (1979) and Nordic Inn Condo. Owners’ Assoc. v. Ventullo, 151 N.H. 571 (2004): Defined laches as an equitable doctrine focused on the inequity of permitting enforcement after unreasonable, prejudicial delay.
• Thayer v. Town of Tilton, 151 N.H. 483 (2004): Articulated the four-factor laches test: the plaintiff’s knowledge, defendants’ conduct, the interests to be vindicated, and prejudice.
• Restatement (Second) of Conflict of Laws § 74 (1971): Recognizes that a party may be precluded from attacking a foreign divorce where, under the circumstances, doing so would be inequitable, especially after reliance or inconsistent conduct. The Court’s reliance here aligns New Hampshire doctrine with the broader conflicts consensus.
• RSA 459:1 (enacted 1949, unchanged): Provides that a foreign divorce is “of no force or effect” in New Hampshire if both spouses were domiciled in New Hampshire when the divorce proceeding commenced. The Court held this text does not displace equitable defenses.
• RSA 491:8-a, III: Summary judgment statute, invoked in affirming judgment for the defendants on laches.

Legal Reasoning

1) Statute of Limitations: Rescission and Quiet Title Are Governed by RSA 508:2

The plaintiff’s deed-based claims sought to rescind an April 1974 quitclaim deed and to quiet title to the Brookline property. The Supreme Court clarified that such claims are controlled by RSA 508:2’s twenty-year limitations period for “action[s] for the recovery of real estate,” not the general three-year period for “personal actions” under RSA 508:4. Because the gravamen of the relief was the restoration of an interest in land, RSA 508:2 applied.

Accrual: Applying Conrad v. Hazen, the Court identified the latest accrual point as July 1974, when the decedent presented the Dominican divorce decree and told the plaintiff they were legally divorced and that the decree was registered in New Hampshire. At this juncture, the plaintiff knew or should have known of the facts constituting the alleged fraud: she had executed the deed in reliance on a representation tailored to an intact marriage and a joint relocation plan; the divorce revelation made plain that premise had collapsed. She also had actual notice of the conveyance when she signed the quitclaim deed. Either way, the twenty-year clock expired long before the 2021 filing.

The plaintiff argued tolling based on alleged fraud in a contemporaneous separation agreement. The Court rejected this for the simple reason that the remedy sought was rescission of the deed, not relief under the separation agreement; the applicable statute is determined by the nature of the claim and relief. On the pleadings, the deed claims were therefore time-barred.

2) Laches Bars Collateral Attack on the Dominican Divorce Despite RSA 459:1

The plaintiff sought a declaratory judgment that the Dominican divorce was void ab initio under RSA 459:1, arguing that both parties were domiciled in New Hampshire when the proceedings commenced. The Court did not resolve domicile; instead, it held that laches bars the challenge even if the statute otherwise would strip the decree of “force or effect.”

Authority to apply equity: The Court underscored that the probate division possesses equitable powers within its subject-matter jurisdiction and that RSA 459:1 does not displace equity (citing Bussey and the Restatement). New Hampshire has long displayed a “manifest reluctance” to unsettle divorce judgments after second marriages and substantial reliance by third parties.

Laches elements and undisputed facts: Applying Thayer’s four-factor test, the Court emphasized:

• Knowledge: The plaintiff knew of the 1974 divorce and then relied on it to remarry Richard Wagner in 1983, declaring herself his surviving spouse upon his death.
• Defendants’ conduct: The defendants — the decedent’s second wife and children — acted for decades in reliance on the divorce and the decedent’s subsequent 1986 marriage to Sally; there was no suggestion of inequitable conduct by them.
• Interests to be vindicated: Stability of marital status, legitimacy and inheritance expectations of the second family, and the finality of long-settled personal status relationships.
• Prejudice: A forty-seven-year delay; death of both the decedent and Richard Wagner; loss of evidence; entrenched reliance by the second family; and the disruptive consequences of retroactively voiding a decades-old marriage.

On these undisputed facts, the Court concluded that the delay was unreasonable and prejudicial as a matter of law, warranting summary judgment on laches. Consequently, the plaintiff could not claim surviving spouse status under RSA 560:10, and her derivative restitution/damages claim also failed.

Impact and Practical Significance

• Rescission of real estate conveyances belongs under RSA 508:2: Litigants seeking to undo deeds — even for alleged fraud — must heed the twenty-year limitations period keyed to when the right to recover accrued. The Court’s explicit selection of RSA 508:2 over RSA 508:4 provides needed clarity and will guide pleading and limitations defenses in future property-related rescission and quiet-title cases.
• Equity tempers statutory “voidness” in family status: Wagner reaffirms that equity can bar collateral attacks on foreign divorces, even when a statute labels them “of no force or effect.” This underscores New Hampshire’s policy prioritizing the stability of long-settled marital statuses and reliance interests, aligning with Bussey and Restatement § 74.
• Laches can be resolved on summary judgment: Where the passage of time, reliance, and prejudice are undisputed, laches is not merely a fact question for trial; courts may grant summary judgment as a matter of law.
• Estate and probate planning certainty: For estates with long histories of prior marriages or quick foreign divorces, Wagner provides assurance that courts will resist upending decades-old family structures, particularly where a second marriage produced children and property arrangements premised on the divorce’s validity.
• Prompt action is essential: Individuals who suspect defects in a foreign divorce must act without delay. Waiting until estate administration to mount a challenge — particularly after remarrying in reliance on the original decree — is likely to be fatal.
• Focus on the remedy in choosing the limitations statute: The opinion’s reasoning will likely be cited beyond real property, reminding practitioners that the nature of the relief sought drives limitations analysis.