Divorced man doesn’t have to keep paying ex-wife who tried to kill him with a hatchet

A woman who tried to kill her ex-husband with a hatchet cannot demand that he continue paying her under their divorce agreement, the Massachusetts Supreme Court said.

Julie Rabinowitz had alleged breach of contract by Mark Schenkman because he stopped his monthly payments of $3,533.33 after she attacked him in August 2015 at his dental office in North Attleborough.

Rabinowitz, then 46, was masked and in camouflage clothing as she hid in Schenkman’s minivan outside the office, the Sun Chronicle newspaper reported; she had a hatchet, a machete, a novelty baseball bat and a pair of work gloves.

Her apparent plan to ambush her husband there was thwarted when their 9-year-old son came out to the vehicle first, and she ended up pursuing the pair back into the office, the court record said. She reportedly told the boy to move out of the way because “I have to kill your father.” Schenkman, then 46, suffered hatchet cuts to his arms and chest.

Rabinowitz pleaded guilty in a deal that sent her to jail for a year.

In 2019, she sued her husband over his failure to make the monthly payments. A judge concluded that Schenkman was not obligated to pay “because the wife’s attempt to murder him constituted a violation of the covenant of good faith and fair dealing.”

The Supreme Court’s decision last week on her appeal affirmed the lower court’s judgment.

Rabinowitz and Schenkman divorced in 2013, ending a 16-year marriage. He got sole custody of their four children. The separation agreement stipulated that he pay her $212,000 in 60 monthly payments for her share of marital assets, namely his practice as an oral surgeon. He had made 17 payments at the time of the attack, the court record said.

The initial judge in the breach-of-contract case said the attack was apparently “part of a woefully misguided plan to regain custody of her children.”

Four months before the attack, the couple’s house in North Attleborough was destroyed by a suspicious fire, the Sun Chronicle said.