Estate of Thomas Wilson Hoyt

Case Number

22PR00270

Case Type

Hearing Date / Time

Wed, 02/21/2024 - 08:30

Nature of Proceedings

Petition for Final Distribution

Tentative Ruling

Probate Notes:

Appearances required. 

After review of the supplement filed on February 13, 2024, the following is noted for the Court at the hearing:

The Court raised very legitimate concerns about the three documents at issue in this case since the very first hearing when Petitioner was appointed personal representative. As a result of those concerns, the Court only admitted one of those three documents into Probate.  The Court has continually raised the same concerns in the last two hearings, and after two supplements, those concerns have not been resolved.

Petitioner’s two supplements fail to address the fundamental question underlying the Court’s concerns about which document contains the justiciable intent of the decedent, Thomas Wilson Hoyt: What articulable purpose would it serve to ignore well-settled principles of California law to alter distribution as proposed?

Stated another way: If the two heirs entitled to take the decedent’s estate in equal shares want to give those shares to another, what is stopping them from doing so after the court honors the law of this state and orders distribution according to the intent of the decedent?

Petitioner’s arguments in both supplements do nothing to offer persuasive legal analysis of authority that any court in this state could rely upon to alter distribution of the estate from that in the only testamentary device admitted to probate.

The Layperson’s Will doctrine is antiquated and not applicable to the facts in this case. Petitioner’s reference to this doctrine is not persuasive, because the doctrine applies to the interpretation of terms within a will that may be ambiguous and need to be given meaning by the court to resolve the ambiguity.  The doctrine does not apply to whether an instrument was executed in conformity with statutory requirements outlined in the Probate Code.  No case cited in Witkin’s Summary of the Law, §210, stands for the proposition that a court in this state can lower the bar a testamentary device must clear in order to be considered a valid manifestation of the decedent’s intent.  Further, all cases cited in that section of the treatise were decided before the modern Probate Code sections governing the admission of wills to probate existed.

To be clear: no term is at issue in the only will admitted to Probate. The only issue before the court is whether two additional documents can possibly be considered under California law to alter the valid will.  As outlined extensively in prior notes, that issue is resolved in favor of rejecting any reference to the two documents outside of probate.

Probate Code section 6130 is not applicable.  In order for the two writings outside of probate to be incorporated into the will, the writings incorporated by reference must be 1) in existence when the will is executed; and 2) must be described sufficiently in the will to identify the extraneous writing.  The holographic will (“HW”) is the only writing arguably in existence when the will was executed, because the jurat on the HW was dated before the will was executed.  Petitioner points to zero language in the will that references the HW, and the “Instructions for the distribution of my personal property” writing is not dated, thus not known to be in existence when the will was executed, even though the will references such a document could exist. Thus, 6130 cannot save these defects and allow the court to incorporate them into the will.

There is no authority in California law that allows a court to reform distribution provisions of a will, just because all heirs agree.  Petitioner points to no authority for this proposition, and the court knows of no authority to do so.  The only authority even remotely related to reformation of a will in the manner proposed by Petitioner is Estate of Duke (2015) 61 Cal.4th 871, 879: 

[W]e hold that the categorical bar on reformation of unambiguous wills is not justified and that reformation is permissible if clear and convincing evidence establishes an error in the expression of the testator's intent and establishes the testator's actual specific intent at the time the will was drafted.

(Emphasis added.)  Here, the clear and convincing evidence of intent is lacking.  Petitioner cites to no evidence, other that the ambiguities in the distribution created between the three documents, for proof. Ambiguity, in and of itself, cannot meet the clear and convincing bar.