Aldrich v. Basile

On April 5, 2004, Ann Dunn Aldrich of Keystone Heights, Florida, sat down with a preprinted stationery-store will kit called an E-Z Legal Form and did exactly what the form told her to do.

Under the heading “Bequests,” after the form's printed line directing that “after payment of all my just debts, my property be bequeathed in the manner following,” she wrote out her possessions by hand. The house and lot at 150 SW Garden Street. A Fidelity rollover IRA, with the account number and the customer-service phone number. A United Defense life insurance policy. A Chevy Tracker, with the VIN. Every bank account at M & S Bank, listed by number.

All of it to her sister, Mary Jane Eaton. And then one more line: “If Mary Jane Eaton dies before I do, I leave all listed to James Michael Aldrich” — her brother.

The will was signed. It was properly witnessed. It contained, in the Florida Supreme Court's phrase, “no other distributive provisions.” That last part is the entire case.

The sister became the benefactor

Three years later, on November 10, 2007, Mary Jane Eaton died first. The First District's opinion put it with unusual elegance: she died before Ann, “becoming her benefactor instead of her beneficiary.”

Eaton left her sister cash and land in Putnam County. Eaton's estate closed on July 23, 2008. Two days later, Ann Aldrich opened a new Fidelity investment account and deposited the inherited money into it.

Note what she did not do. The new Fidelity account was not the Fidelity rollover IRA listed in the will — it was a different account, opened five years after the will was written, holding money the will had never heard of. The Putnam County land was not the Garden Street lot. Ann Aldrich now owned two significant assets that her will did not mention in any way.

Later that year she appears to have noticed. Found with the original will was a piece of paper with the printed title “Just a Note,” dated November 18, 2008, in her handwriting, over her signature:

• “This is an addendum to my will dated April 5, 2004.” It went on: since her sister had died, she wished to reiterate that all her worldly possessions pass to her brother, James Michael Aldrich.
• One witness, not two. The only other signature on the page belonged to Sheila Aldrich Schuh — her niece, and James's daughter. Fla. Stat. §732.502(1)(b) requires two attesting witnesses, and §732.502(5) requires a codicil to be executed with the same formalities as a will.

So the note was not a codicil. It was a piece of paper. Everyone in the case agreed on what it said, and nobody could do anything with it.

Ann Aldrich died on October 9, 2009. She left no spouse and no children. One brother survived her. Two nieces — daughters of a brother who had predeceased her — did not appear anywhere in her will.

Trial court, First District, Supreme Court

James Aldrich was appointed personal representative. The nieces, Laurie Basile among them, filed to claim the after-acquired property as intestate heirs.

The brother's argument was the sensible one, and it very nearly won. He pointed to Fla. Stat. §732.6005(2), which says a will “is construed to pass all property which the testator owns at death, including property acquired after the execution of the will.” He pointed to the will naming only two people. He pointed to the ancient presumption that a testator making a will intends to dispose of her whole estate and does not intend partial intestacy. The trial court in Clay County agreed and entered summary judgment for him.

The First District Court of Appeal reversed. Its reasoning turned on the first subsection rather than the second. §732.6005(1) provides that “the intention of the testator as expressed in the will controls.” And Ann Aldrich, the court observed, had devised her property with “painstaking specificity.” Her will plainly evinced an intent to dispose of each particular item it named — and, equally plainly, expressed no intent at all about property it did not allude to in any way. The court sent the case back with directions to enter judgment for the nieces, and certified the question to the Supreme Court of Florida as one of great public importance.

On March 27, 2014, the Supreme Court approved the First District and answered the certified question in the negative. §732.6005(2) is a rule about timing — it stops anyone from arguing that a devise fails merely because the asset was bought after the will was signed. It is not a rule that manufactures a devise where the will made none. No clause, no devise. No devise, intestacy.

Justice Pariente writes the sentence everyone quotes

Justice Barbara Pariente concurred in the result and then wrote separately to say what the majority could not. She began by conceding that the outcome was correct and that it almost certainly did not match what Ann Aldrich wanted. The unenforceable handwritten note, she wrote, “clearly demonstrates” that Aldrich's true intent was to pass everything to her brother — but true intent is not stated intent, and a court is confined to the will.

Then she assigned the blame precisely. The unfortunate result, she wrote, stemmed not from the Court's interpretation of Florida probate law but from the fact that Ms. Aldrich wrote her will using a commercially available form — one that “did not have space to include a residuary clause or pre-printed language that would allow a testator to elect to use such a clause.”

The form was in the record. There was nowhere on it to write the sentence that would have decided this case.

Her closing is the part that made the case famous, and it is worth reading in full rather than in paraphrase. She acknowledged that many Floridians have difficulty affording a lawyer. Then: this case “does remind me of the old adage ‘penny-wise and pound-foolish.’” The cost of a preprinted form is obviously lower than the cost of a knowledgeable lawyer. But the time, effort, and expense of extensive litigation to prove a testator's true intent after her death “can necessitate the expenditure of much more substantial amounts in attorney's fees than was avoided during the testator's life by the use of a pre-printed form.” The result is frustration of the testator's intent plus extensive attorney's fees — “the precise results the testator sought to avoid in the first place.”

A footnote adds the detail that turns the case from instructive to painful. The record indicated that shortly before her death, Ann Aldrich had in fact consulted an attorney who was drafting a will for her. She died days before she was to review it. The testimony was excluded as hearsay.