Estate of Rodney Clonts (UPDATED 11/6/23)

Case Number

23PR00053

Case Type

Hearing Date / Time

Tue, 11/07/2023 - 09:00

Nature of Proceedings

Petition to Determine Claim to Property (Prob. Code, §850)

Tentative Ruling

Appearances required.  The Petition filed by Lisa Tabuyo on September 19, 2023, received objection and must be set for evidentiary hearing to resolve.

Any other party desirous to object must file a written objection before the next hearing.  The court has authority to require all objectors to file a written objection pursuant CRC, Rule 7.801, or else deem the failure to do so a waiver. 

The following is noted for the Court to guide discussion at the hearing:

The most relevant facts in this case are undisputed.  Petitioner and Objector agree that:

-      Decedent and his wife owned zero real property before they were married.

-      When they married, Decedent’s wife had one child from a previous relationship, the Petitioner here.

-      During their marriage, the Decedent and his wife together had one child.

-      The subject real property was purchased by Decedent and his wife as a married couple in February of 1998, and took title to said property as joint tenants.

-      Although these two facts are implied, the purchase money for the home was community property, as well as the funds that paid the purchase money mortgage…at least until 2005.

-      The subject real property was considered by both spouses to be community property…at least until April 2005.

-      On April 28, 2005, Decedent’s wife executed an Interspousal Grant Deed that transferred the subject real property to Decedent as his sole and separate property.

-      On that same date, Decedent executed a Deed of Trust securing a $227,000 lien on the subject property.

At this point in the undisputed timeline, if the Court were required to make a finding as to the character of the subject real property as a result of a dissolution proceeding between the spouses, the Court would be forced by Family Code sections 760 (all property obtained during marriage is community property) and section 721 (presumption of undue influence when transaction inequitably benefits one spouse over the other) to conclude that the real property was community property, based on these facts. (See also In Re Marriage of Valli (2014) 58 Cal.4th 1396, 1408 [“the Family Code section 760 presumption controls in characterizing property acquired during the marriage in an action between the spouses.”].) 

As a result, the Court would ask the Decedent’s spouse why she made such a transfer.  The Court would be particularly interested in facts that neither party pleaded, such as if Decedent’s spouse held title in a separate parcel of real property as her own separate property, if Decedent’s spouse intended to transmute the subject property, if the couple intended for Decedent alone to carry the burden of the lien on the home without payment of the lien by community funds, whether the Decedent paid his wife any of his own separate property for her community property share of the subject real property, and whether Decedent made any promises to deed the subject property back to his wife at a future date or after a specific future event.

The answers to those questions would matter, because the answers to those questions could possibly overcome the mountainous presumption of community property and undue influence that attached to that Interspousal grant by the Family Code sections cited above, under those facts.  And even though this Court was not prayed to make such a finding in 2005, what it would have done at that point in 2005 matters in 2023 for the same reasons: because those two mountainous presumptions must still be overcome by facts that would allow this Court to make a finding that the community property presumption was overcome by facts contrary to the property being held as community property.

With those issues highlighted, the remaining undisputed facts do not even come close to overcoming the Family Code presumptions cited above:

-      Decedent died intestate on January 9, 2020.

-      Decedent’s wife died intestate a mere 6 months later (June 2020).

-      On January 23, 2023, the only child shared by Decedent and his wife assigned all her interest in Decedent’s potential $200,000+ estate for a paltry $25,000.

-      On January 24, 2023, Objector filed a Petition for Letters of Administration in this case.

-      On March 3, 2023, the subject property was sold in a foreclosure sale, which resulted in $230,000 in surplus funds, after the lien on the home was presumably paid off.

-      On March 14, 2023, Objector was appointed personal representative to administer the Decedent’s estate.

In fact, Objector is lost in an inescapable web of irony created by the aptly made point that Petitioner cited zero law in support of Petitioner’s claims, while himself citing zero facts to overcome the above cited presumptions, while simultaneously failing to acknowledge the existence of the law that creates those presumptions, and the cases explaining in detail how those presumptions operate under the facts of this case to absolutely dismantle Objector’s arguments.  (See Estate of Wall (2021) 68 Cal.App.5th 168, 174–175 [discussing presumptions raised by In Re Marriage of Valli, supra, 58 Cal.4th 1396 and subsequent case of In re Brace (2020) 9 Cal.5th 903.].)

Additionally, the last three facts raise even more questions that this Court must ask due to missing facts:

-      How was the lien on the real property paid after April 28, 2005?

-      Did Decedent’s wife have any Moore/Marsden reimbursement claims for community funds paid before April 28, 2005, or after that date?

-      How is a contract giving up all rights in a $230,000 estate for a mere $25,000, not usurious under California Law?

-      Does that contract have to comply with the requirements to disclaim an interest in an estate located in Probate Code section 275 et seq? If so, does it comply?

-      Did Objector know about the foreclosure status of the real property when he petitioned to be appointed administrator in January 2023? If so, why did he not seek emergency Special Administrator status to keep the property from a foreclosure sale?

-      How is the Objector/personal representative not liable for the foreclosure of the real property, and any loss in value the foreclosure caused?

At very minimum, the parties must address the issues in this case that were similarly adjudicated in In re Marriage of Starr (2010) 189 Cal.App.4th 277:

As we have seen, the failure to add Martha onto the title is constructive fraud under section 721, and constructive fraud is presumed to be undue influence, which means the transaction was not free and voluntary. When the trial court found Martha did not act freely and voluntarily, it necessarily found that she quitclaimed her interest in the house as the result of undue influence. (See In re Marriage of Dawley (1976) 17 Cal.3d 342, 354–355 [when trial court found that wife signed antenuptial agreement freely and voluntarily, Supreme Court implied necessary finding that the transaction was not the result of undue influence].) Under Jones, supra, 140 Cal. 587, the lender's suggestion to have Martha quitclaim her interest in the house and have Ron add her to the title later, combined with Ron's failure to fulfill his promise to do so, is constructive fraud amounting to undue influence. We believe that when the trial court referred to the lender's suggestion as the source of the undue influence, it was attempting to make this connection. Once read this way, the finding of fact squares with both the applicable law and the facts of this case. We therefore construe the finding in that manner. (See Mintz v. Rowitz (1970) 13 Cal.App.3d 216, 227–228 [in action by heirs to enforce agreement between spouses making mutual wills that the survivor would not alter agreed-upon estate distribution plan, trial court found for plaintiff heirs, but made inconsistent and irreconcilable finding that the wife, who was the first spouse to die, had fully understood the consequences of her will, which in fact did not include the agreed-upon distribution plan; under rule to construe ambiguous findings in support of judgment, appellate court affirmed, holding that “it seems quite clear that what the court meant to say was that” the wife understood her will to be a memorandum of the separate agreement].)

(Id., at p. 289.)