Zimmer, Duncan & Cole

Courts Follow Unique Set of Rules for Estate Cases

After a mother’s death, her son Leo became the odd-man-out. He began pointing fingers at his five siblings and raised numerous questions about her estate. When the trial court refused to intervene on his behalf, Leo attempted an appeal to the South Dakota Supreme Court.  The resulting opinion is captioned, In the Estate of Minnie Geier, (2012 S.D. 2).

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Our firm handles a lot of estate litigation cases. If there is one word to sum them up, it would be “tricky.”  The procedural rules are different; the stakes are often very high; and it’s often impossible to please everyone. Unlike a simple two-party lawsuit, there are often dozens of stakeholders, including creditors, children, banks, and insurers. Usually, a lone personal representative (often called an executor) is charged with keeping the peace. Famously, estate cases tend to breed the same distrust and animosity as a difficult divorce.  That is the black cloud that had descended upon Minnie Geier’s family after her death in 2010.
She left behind six children. One of them (Leo) seemed to be filled with doubt about the others. Minnie had chosen her daughter Darlene to be her personal representative.  Darlene immediately took charge, inventoried her property and got the estate in order. Darlene assembled her siblings, gave them each a copy of the will, and presented her plan for wrapping up their mother’s estate by year-end. Six weeks later she presented a complete and final accounting of her mother’s remaining assets.  None of her siblings objected to her findings. The following week, her lawyer sent them letters announcing the next step would be distributing those assets to the siblings and closing the estate.
This is when Leo began to doubt.  He asked the Court to “supervise” the estate because of some alleged misconduct by Darlene and another brother prior to their mother’s death. 
“Supervision” of an estate requires court approval for almost all of the personal representative’s actions.  It’s a good check and balance to have, especially in situations of distrust.  But it is quite burdensome, and it’s unnecessary when the personal representative is honest and reliable. Leo asked for supervision because he alleged that sister Darlene and brother Clemens had inappropriately diverted funds to themselves out of their mother’s checking account prior to her death. For example, in the last weeks of Minnie’s life, Darlene had received $7,000 in checks to pay for her “living expenses.”    Likewise, over a period of three years, Clemens had received almost $12,000 from Minnie, including some for “casual labor.”  The trial court offered Leo the opportunity to investigate, call witnesses, and present evidence.  After hearing all of it, the trial concluded the payments in question were acceptable:  in their mother’s final weeks, Darlene had temporarily relocated from Montana to care for her mother 12 hours a day.  Likewise, Clemens had had been providing similar help and services in the three years prior.  The court found no need for supervision. 
Leo appealed.
The process of starting an appeal is very specific.  To do so, a party has 30 days in which to serve and file a “notice of appeal,” a document which identifies the particular court action to be reviewed. Not every decision of the lower court can be appealed.  (If they could, the Supreme Court’s work would never end:  it would be filled with requests from disgruntled litigants.) Instead, the right to an automatic appeal to the state Supreme Court is limited to the 30 days after the lower court’s final decision. During that 30-day period (and never a day later), the notice of appeal must be mailed to each and every party in the case (or their lawyer). Leo sent out one notice of appeal: to the lawyer representing the Estate.  Leo was correct that the Estate was a party to the lawsuit, and therefore needed to be served. However, what Leo overlooked were the other interested parties to this lawsuit:  the heirs. 
The Court explained that it’s normally easy to identify the parties to a lawsuit by looking at the legal documents already filed.  In a regular case, those would identify the parties as Someone vs. Someone Else. Here, the case is called “In the matter of the Estate of Minnie Geier,” so the identity of the parties is not immediately apparent. Estate causes are filled with tricky rules like this, and the Supreme Court is unforgiving to those who break them. The Court dismissed Leo’s appeal because he failed to send the Notice of Appeal to the other five heirs (his siblings).  His appeal will never be heard.