In Robins v. Robins, an ex-wife sued her ex-husband for breaching fiduciary duties regarding the sale of their former marital residence. No. 02-16-00285-CV, 2018 Tex. App. LEXIS 3534 (Tex. App.—Fort Worth May 17, 2018). The trial court entered a judgment finding that the ex-husband breached a fiduciary duty to his former wife and awarded her all the net proceeds from the sale and awarded her attorney’s fees. The ex-husband appealed, and the court of appeals reversed and rendered. The court stated:
Generally, to prove a claim for breach of fiduciary duty, a plaintiff must prove that the defendant had a fiduciary duty to the plaintiff, breached it, and thereby caused damages to the plaintiff. First United Pentecostal Church of Beaumont v. Parker, 514 S.W.3d 214, 220 (Tex. 2017). While spouses owe fiduciary duties to one another, ex-spouses generally do not. See Solares v. Solares, 232 S.W.3d 873, 881 (Tex. App.—Dallas 2007, no pet.) (holding that “in a contested divorce where each spouse is independently represented by counsel, the fiduciary relationship terminates”); In re Marriage of Notash, 118 S.W.3d 868, 872 (Tex. App.—Texarkana 2003, no pet.) (noting that any fiduciary duty between spouses terminates upon divorce); Bass v. Bass, 790 S.W.2d 113, 119 (Tex. App.—Fort Worth 1990, no writ) (“Although marriage may bring about a fiduciary relationship, such a relationship clearly does not continue when a husband and wife hire numerous independent professional counsel to represent them respectively in a contested divorce proceeding.”) (citation omitted). Jerry therefore had no formal fiduciary duty to Rhonda as a matter of law. Rhonda contends that “[a] moral and social relationship was created when [she and Jerry] decided post-divorce not to sell the home and [to] maintain it while the children finished high school” and that “[a] fiduciary duty existed for each party to not harm the other’s fifty percent interest in the [P]roperty.” While it is true that an informal fiduciary duty may arise from a moral, social, domestic or purely personal relationship of trust and confidence, Collins v. Kappa Sigma Fraternity, No. 02-14-00294-CV, 2017 WL 218286, at *10-12 (Tex. App.—Fort Worth Jan. 19, 2017, pet. denied), no evidence in the record before us indicates that Rhonda and Jerry had that sort of relationship after their divorce; Jerry therefore also had no informal fiduciary duty to Rhonda. See Higgins v. Higgins, 514 S.W.3d 382, 389-90 (Tex. App.—San Antonio 2017, pet. denied). We sustain Jerry’s first issue.
Id. The court also held that as attorney’s fees are not available for a breach-of-fiduciary-duty claim, the trial court erred in awarding the ex-wife her fees.
