I wrote yesterday about the role of standing in Mississippi will contests. Simply stated, a person cannot bring a valid will contest unless they have a valid interest in the outcome of the matter to bring before the court.
The recent probate case of Tatum vs. Wells[1] illustrates the role that standing can play in a Mississippi will contest. In December 1966, Eldridge Tatum died leaving six children. He had a will that left all of his property and possessions to one son, Robert Tatum. Robert admitted the will to the probate court in October of 1967 and was appointed as executor of Eldrige’s estate. But Robert died unexpectedly in 1969, before his father’s estate was closed.
Eldridge’s estate remained in limbo. As time progressed, Robert’s property was dispersed amongst his wife and seven children, who maintained and paid taxes on the land that Eldridge had left to Robert. In 2004, Robert’s children attempted to divide the property amongst themselves. However, the title company refused to complete the transfer of title until Eldridge Tatum’s estate was closed. (Note: This is an example of how a probate issue can lie dormant for years, only to pop up when someone needs to deal with the property–see our section on Probate and Real Estate for more information.)
Robert’s daughter Helen Wells went before the probate court and asked to be appointed executrix over her grandfather’s estate so that she could close it. Her cousins responded to her request to be named executrix by contesting the will. The cousins were upset that all of Eldridge’s property had been left to Robert, to the exclusion of their parents. By the time of the will contest, all of Eldridge Tatum’s children had passed away.
The lower court dismissed the case, finding that the grandchildren who were contesting Eldridge’s will lacked standing to do so. The contesting parties appealed, placing the issue before the Mississippi Court of Appeals.
The Court of Appeals noted that Eldridge’s children would have been interested parties to their father’s will at the time it was admitted to probate. They were his heirs at law who would have taken property from their father through intestate succession. In other words, because they would have benefited from the invalidity of Eldridge’s will, they had a legitimate interest in the probate proceeding and thus had standing to contest his will, as long as they did so within the two-year statute of limitations.
But Eldridge’s children didn’t contest the will. Could their children (i.e., Eldridge’s grandchildren) now do so? The answer depended on whether, at the time the will was entered into probate, they had a direct pecuniary interest in the estate that would have been detrimentally affected if the will had been determined to be invalid.
Mississippi does allow a right of representation, which allows descendants of deceased heirs to take the share that their parent would have taken if alive. But the right of representation only applies if the heir is deceased. In this case, the grandchildren who contested the will would not have had a right of representation at the time of the will contest since their parents were still alive at that time. Even if the will had been found invalid and their parents had inherited a share of Eldridge’s estate, there is no guarantee any of Eldridge’s estate would have passed to the grandchildren (for example, it could have been spent by their parents before it got to the next generation). Therefore, the grandchildren had no claim to the estate now that their parents have all passed away.
The Court of Appeals held that the grandchildren were not interested parties at the time the will was entered into probate. They lacked a pecuniary interest at the time their grandfather died and throughout the two-year period open to contest. They did not have the ability to inherit through intestate succession at that time, and they had no assurance that they would have received the property even if their parents had inherited it. Thus, the grandchildren did not have standing to contest the will.
Tatum v. Wells, 2007-CP-02081-COA
[1] Tatum v. Wells, 2007-CP-02081-COA.
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