No Automatic Presumption of Undue Influence Between Spouses

Does the automatic presumption of undue influence apply to transfers between spouses?  According to the Mississippi Court of Appeals decision in In the Matter of the Estate of Patricia McDaniel Langston, the answer is no.

Patricia and Mansfield Langston were married for 11 years. During this time, Patricia transferred the marital home to Mansfield after she purchased a new home. She later executed a will leaving her entire estate to her three adult children from a previous marriage and to one of her sisters. She named her husband as executor of her estate. Her will stated that her husband was left out of the will because he had his own estate.

A few months after signing the will, the Langston’s attorney prepared three deeds. One transferred Patricia’s new home (which had become the marital home) from her name only to both her and Mansfield’s names as joint tenants with right of survivorship. Another deed transferred the original home from Mansfield to Patricia’s mother. The third deed transferred property to a third party in a sale.

A month after transferring the property, Patricia executed another will which changed the executor of her will from her husband to her mother. A few months later, Patricia and Mansfield purchased a CD in the amount of $200,000 in both their names as joint tenants with the right of survivorship. Just under two years later, Patricia died.

Upon her death, Patricia’s mother opened her estate and attempted to set aside the joint tenancies that had been established in the marital home and the CD and bring them into probate for distribution under the terms of Patricia’s will.  The estate claimed that these joint tenancies were the result of undue influence exercised by Mansfield during a time that Patricia suffered from chronic illness.

The lower court relied on the confidential relationship between Mansfield and Patricia to apply the presumption of undue influence. On appeal, the appellate court noted that most marriages inherently involve a close confidential relationship, and therefore, the presumption of undue influence may not always apply.

In the typical undue influence case, the giver and the recipient are in a relationship that gives the recipient the opportunity to wrongfully cause the giver to turn over his or her property. This is known as a confidential relationship.  (For more on undue influence, see What is Undue Influence?).  But in this case, Patricia and Mansfield had been married 11 years. The very nature of a long-term marriage implies a confidential relationship.  This made it easy for the estate to meet the factor test for confidential relationships.

In recognition of this situation, the Court of Appeals declined to apply the automatic presumption of undue influence in the marital context. Instead, the Court held that undue influence must be established by showing that the grantee spouse used “undue methods for the purpose of overcoming the free will” of the grantor spouse such that the grantee controlled her acts and prevented her from acting of her own mind.

In the Langston case, there was overwhelming evidence that Patricia was a very strong-willed person and that she continued to be so during all of the transfers in question. She may have been physically ill, but she attended all meetings and did the majority of talking. It was clear that the transfers were made of her own free will and not as the result of Mansfield exercising his dominance over her. As such, the lower court’s finding of undue influence was reversed.

In the Matter of the Estate of Patricia McDaniel Langston, 2008-CA-01090-COA (Miss. Ct. App. 2010).