Trusts and Estates—The SCOTX Report

23-0463·Petition For Review

In re Marriage of Benavides

family law trusts and estates

A spouse's death while her appeal from a divorce decree is pending does not moot the appeal where whether the marriage ended by decree or by death substantially affects her property rights, here her claim under the deceased's will.
Whatever authority the Estates Code gives a guardian to seek a divorce for a ward, it at least requires findings by the guardianship court and the divorce court that pursuing and granting the divorce serves the ward's best interests and well-being; because neither court made them and the ward has died, the Court vacated the decree and dismissed.

Read full breakdown

24-0315·Petition For Review

In re Estate of Lopez

trusts and estates family law civil procedure

A trial court abused its discretion by admitting a former family-court judge's expert testimony that the parties were informally married, because the informal-marriage elements are within ordinary jurors' understanding, so the testimony did not help the jury under Rule of Evidence 702, and it improperly opined on a legal presumption and said how she would rule as judge.
The error was harmful because the testimony was crucial to the only contested issue on conflicting evidence, was not cumulative, was deliberately offered and was emphasized, so the Court reversed and remanded for a new trial; it did not hold that former judges may never testify as experts.

Read full breakdown

24-0778·Petition For Review

In re Estate of Wheatfall

trusts and estates civil procedure

A probate order admitting a will and denying a competing application for letters is not a final, appealable judgment on a son's pending will-contest objections when the order expressly declined to rule on them and the record shows it was not meant to dispose of them.
The Court reversed the court of appeals' dismissal for lack of jurisdiction and remanded for the merits.

Read full breakdown

24-1009·Petition For Review

Suday v. Suday

trusts and estates civil procedure

An estate's executor who is also its sole beneficiary may represent the estate pro se, because she is for all intents and purposes asserting only her own rights and no other beneficiary is harmed if she proceeds without a lawyer.
The court of appeals therefore erred in dismissing the executor's appeal for want of prosecution after she failed to hire counsel; the Court reserved whether an executor of a single-beneficiary estate with creditors may proceed pro se, and the general rule for estates with other beneficiaries.

Read full breakdown

24-1010·Mandamus

In re Marshall

professional liability legal ethics trusts and estates civil procedure

The Court denied mandamus to E. Pierce Marshall, Jr., who sought pretrial relief on attorney immunity after the trial court denied summary judgment in a family trust dispute involving billions of dollars, and Justices Young and Sullivan dissented from the denial.
The dissent said the Court should have taken the case to decide whether attorney immunity protects against suit and not merely liability, so that a trial court's refusal to apply it can be reviewed by mandamus before trial.

Read full breakdown

25-0057·Mandamus

In re Hunter

professional liability legal ethics trusts and estates civil procedure

The Court denied mandamus to attorney Edwin K. Hunter, who sought pretrial relief on attorney immunity after the trial court denied him summary judgment on claims that he aided and abetted a breach of fiduciary duty by Elaine Marshall, and Justices Young and Sullivan dissented from the denial.
The dissent called Hunter a clean vehicle to decide whether attorney immunity is immunity from suit and whether mandamus is available, because Preston Marshall lost the attorney-client relationship issue in a separate case that appears to have preclusive effect.

Read full breakdown

25-0560·Petition For Review

In re Guardianship of Endicott

trusts and estates civil procedure

On a granted motion to dismiss, the Court granted the petition in the Endicott guardianship, vacated the Tenth Court of Appeals' judgment and opinion, and remanded to the trial court without reaching the merits, after a guardianship order that had been challenged for defective service and unmet statutory requirements was itself vacated.

Read full breakdown

25-0601·Petition For Review

Estate of Long

trusts and estates

Did the court of appeals err by refusing to consider evidence that family trusts named in a will were continued by agreement rather than terminated, and by ignoring the presumption against intestacy?
Does Estates Code § 254.001(d) make a devise to a trust that terminated by its own terms before the testator's death lapse as a matter of law, regardless of later continuation agreements or extrinsic evidence?

Read full breakdown

25-1116·Mandamus

In re Power

trusts and estates civil procedure

Is a brother whose only stake in his sister's separate trusts is a default remainder that arises if she dies without descendants and without an effective appointment a "beneficiary" or "interested person" with a right to a court-ordered accounting under Texas Property Code section 113.151?
Can a trustee obtain mandamus against an accounting order on the ground that the compelled preparation and disclosure of trust information cannot be undone on appeal, or is an ordinary appeal after final judgment an adequate remedy?

Read full breakdown

26-0242·Mandamus

In re Colvin

trusts and estates professional liability civil procedure

May a trial court enforce an arbitrator's subpoena to a settled non-party for more than 40 years of financial, entity and tax records without a proportionality, relevance and undue-burden analysis and without protecting the non-party from undue expense?
Does the parties' earlier settlement and release of accounting and records claims bar the discovery, or is it ordinary trust-related discovery that a beneficiary and current trustee is entitled to for her malpractice claim?

Read full breakdown