By Jeremiah J. Moffit, Esq.,* Courtney A. Sorensen, Esq.*
Craig S. Weinstein, Esq.*, and Sara Z. May, Esq.*
Haggerty v. Thornton (2021) 68 Cal.App.5th 1003, review granted
The Fourth District Court of Appeal held that a settlor's amendment of a trust agreement was valid because the method of revocation and modification described in the trust was not explicitly exclusive.
A 2015 trust provided the settlor with "[t]he right by an acknowledged instrument in writing to revoke or amend this Agreement or any trust hereunder." The 2015 trust required that the amendment be notarized. In 2016, the settlor executed an amendment to the trust before a notary, which the notary acknowledged. However, the amendment did not include the notary seal or stamp. Thereafter, the settlor drafted two handwritten documents, including a 2017 beneficiary list and a 2018 amendment revising beneficiary instructions. These handwritten documents were not notarized but included the following statement "I herewith instruct Patricia Galligan to place this document with her copy of the Trust. She can verify my handwriting." Galligan was the settlor's former attorney. The settlor died that same year. The trial court found that the 2018 amendment was a valid amendment to the trust agreement. A trustee and beneficiary under the prior instruments appealed asserting that a valid amendment required notarization.
The Court of Appeal affirmed. The Court of Appeal found the amendments to be valid because the settlor complied with the statutory method of amendment by signing and delivering a writing to herself as trustee during her lifetime. The Court of Appeal held that the settlor did not intend to bind herself by the non-exclusive language in the trust that described the method to modify or amend the instrument. The statutory procedures for trust revocation and/or modification prescribed in Probate Code sections 15401 and 15402 are available unless the trust designates an exclusive procedure. Here, the trust did not contain exclusivity language, permitting the statutory method for modification to apply in addition to the method prescribed in the trust instrument.
Dae v. Traver (2021) 69 Cal.App.5th 447
The Second District Court of Appeal held that a beneficiary's petition potentially violated trust no contest clauses under former law. Therefore, the trustee showed a probability of success on his petition to enforce the no contest provisions sufficient to defeat the beneficiary's anti-SLAPP motion to strike.
The trustees, with expert advice and counsel, entered into a series of "split dollar" arrangements that ultimately gave a residuary trust an interest in life insurance policies in return for the residuary trust's financing of the premiums for those policies. As part of the arrangement, the trustees established new trusts, which provided the...
