Sometimes to recite the facts of the case is sufficient to explain why it should come out precisely the way it did in the trial court.
Like here.
"Probate Code section 21135 provides that transfers
of property to a person during the transferor’s lifetime will be
treated as an at death transfer to the person under certain
conditions. All of these conditions require a writing. Here we
decide that the transferor’s record of amounts he periodically
distributed to his children is a writing that satisfies the
requirements of section 21135. . . .
David L. Sachs had two children, Benita and Avram.2
David established a trust in 1980 when Benita was 20 years old
and Avram was 12. The trust provided for small distributions to
other beneficiaries, but most of the trust corpus would be
distributed to Benita and Avram equally on David’s death. David
was the original trustee.
In 1989 David began to keep track of money
distributed to his children on papers he referred to as the
“Permanent Record.” When a child asked for money, David
would tell the child that the distribution would be reflected on
the Permanent Record.
In June 2013 David began to experience cognitive
problems due to a stroke. He hired Ronda Landrum as his
bookkeeper to help manage his finances. At David’s instruction
Landrum continued to make distributions to Avram and Benita.
Landrum said David was adamant that she keep a record of the
distributions. After a distribution was made David would often
confirm that the distribution was on the list. Landrum kept a list
for each child in the form of an electronic spreadsheet. David told
Landrum on more than one occasion that keeping the list was
important so that payments made to his children could be
deducted from their respective inheritances.
In October 2013 David resigned as trustee and
Benita became the successor trustee. Following her appointment, she found the Permanent Record among her father’s papers. The
record consists of a separate file for each child. The entries were
made entirely in David’s handwriting. The papers list the dates
and the amounts distributed beginning when each child attained
age 30. The entries were not all made with the same pen, and
the papers were of different types and ages.
In September 2014 Landrum advised the children
that expenditures for David’s residential care and payments to
the children were depleting the trust at a rapid rate. Avram
continued to ask Benita for distributions from the trust. Benita’s
resistance caused friction between the siblings. In a series of emails Avram sought to assure Benita by repeatedly stating that
the distributions would go on his record. One of the e-mails
acknowledged that previous distributions made by David went on
his record.
In October 2015 Benita learned that Avram was
contending the Permanent Record did not exist or that he was
not bound by it. By then, David’s mental condition had
deteriorated to such an extent that he could not be asked about
his intention in creating the Permanent Record.
After David’s death, Benita filed this petition for
instructions to equalize the distribution of assets from the trust.
She claimed that the disparity in lifetime distributions in favor of
Avram should be deducted from Avram’s distributive share of the
trust. The trial court granted the petition, and found that Avram
received $451,027 more than Benita in lifetime distributions."
That's all I needed to hear. I read the rest of the opinion, which examines at length why the trial court got it exactly right under the law. But I was already there once I read the facts. This seems pretty much the paradigmatic case of where an equalization is in order. Why (Avram) Sachs and his counsel thought it was worth the money to appeal is fairly beyond me. The facts alone made this a laydown.
