Robert Foisie's ex-wife may once again pursue his $4.5M donation to WPI

Photo/Grant Welker The Foisie Innovation Studio opened in September 2018.

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The U.S. Court of Appeals for the first circuit vacated a decision made by a U.S. District Court judge last year, allowing the ex-wife of Worcester Polytechnic Institute’s largest donor to continue pursuing legal options to retrieve funds her late ex-husband allegedly hid before donating them to the Worcester school, according to a July 24 decision.

An opinion written by Appellate Judge Bruce Selya ruled Janet Foisie, former wife of Robert Foisie, must be allowed to continue pursuing the some $4.5 million in offshore assets and promissory notes Robert is accused of hiding during their divorce 2011 divorce proceedings. The money is believed to potentially be part of a nearly $39 million sum donated to the school in the nine years since the divorce. Robert Foisie died in 2018.

According to the opinion, which provided background on the case, the couple had agreed to split their assets, leaving each with approximately $20 million in securities and real estate, while Robert retained ownership of several corporations. Both were required to certify they had each fully disclosed their assets, according to the document.

Later, Foisie accused her ex-husband of hiding assets during the divorce, including a Swiss trust valued at about $4.5 million at the time of the divorce, according to Selya’s recounting of the case’s key facts. Robert later acknowledged he did not report the trust as part of a discovery response related to Foisie’s accusation.

WPI, for its part, has argued Janet Foisie did not count as a creditor able to prosecute fraudulent transfers under common law and Connecticut’s iteration of the Uniform Fraudulent Transfer Act, and instead she was subject to the Massachusetts version of the UFTA, according to the court opinion. That decision was upheld by a U.S. District Court in Massachusetts last September, ultimately dismissing the case. July’s opinion by the appellate court undoes that decision, tossing the case back down the legal ladder.

“We need go no further,” the appellate court decision concludes. “Having endeavored to unravel some strands of the tangled web of facts and law in which this case is enmeshed, we remain mindful that there is more unraveling yet to be done. That additional unraveling, though, is for the district court.”

Over the last decade, Robert has become WPI’s largest single donor. Both its Foisie Business School and Foisie Innovation Studio are named after him.

"We respect the court's decision and will continue to defend this important case, which threatens to take away critical scholarship support from students in need," said WPI director of strategic communications Alison Duffy, in an email.

News of the decision to allow Janet Foisie to pursue the funds was first reported by the Worcester Telegram & Gazette.