HomeMy WebLinkAbout12-11-06
1 Monday, December 4, 2006
2 1:30 p.m.
3 MS. FARNER-STRASBAUGH: This is the time and
4 place set for a hearing on the petition to admit to probate
5 a photocopy of a last will and testament of Helen P. McRae.
6 As you all know, I am the Register of Wills.
7 Our solicitor is usually in attendance, but he had a family
8 crisis and couldn't be here today.
9 Margie Wevodau is the First Deputy. She will
10 be swearing in whoever is giving testimony. Marie Farley is
11 our court reporter for the day.
12 Margie, to get started, would you like to
13 swear in the witnesses?
14 Whereupon,
15 COLIN DOUGLAS McRAE and NANCY LOUISE McRAE JAMISON
16 having been duly sworn, testified as follows:
17 MS. FARNER-STRASBAUGH: Okay. Solicitor
18 Sohonage has forwarded a couple of questions he would like
19 me to refer to. And of course, I have got too many papers
20 on my desk and can't find them.
21 Marie, do you need their addresses?
22 MS. JAMISON: 1321 Swope Drive, Boiling
23 Springs, Pa. That's 17007.
24 MR. McRAE: Colin Douglas McRae, 442 Montana
25 Circle, Ojai, O-j-a-i, California, 93023.
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1 MS. FARNER-STRASBAUGH: The three burdens of
2 proof that we are going to talk about today, if an original
3 will is lost, certain proofs are necessary prior to
4 accepting a photocopy for probate.
5 One, it is necessary to prove that the
6 testator duly and properly executed the will.
7 Do you have knowledge of that?
8 MS. JAMISON: To the best of my knowledge,
9 she did.
10 MR. McRAE: To the best of my knowledge, she
11 did.
12 MS. FARNER-STRASBAUGH: Two, it must be
13 proven that the contents of the executed will were
14 substantially as appears on the copy admitted for probate.
15 MS. JAMISON: I believe that to be true.
16 MR. McRAE: I believe that to be true.
17 MS. FARNER-STRASBAUGH: It must be proven
18 when the testator died the will remain undestroyed or
19 unrevoked by the testator.
20 This is a difficult burden, obviously because
21 the presumption is that if we can't find it, she chose to
22 revoke it. In absence to proof of the contrary, it is
23 presumed that she revoked it.
24 Do either of you have any knowledge about
25 that fact?
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1 MR. McRAE: I do not believe she revoked the
2 will.
3 MS. JAMISON: No, I don't think she did.
4 MS. FARNER-STRASBAUGH: Based on?
5 MR. McRAE: She would have typically sent me
6 a copy of any new will, as she did in the case of this one.
7 MS. JAMISON: She lived right down the street
8 practically. I saw her every weekend. She never said
9 anything about revoking the will.
10 MR. HUGHES: You didn't find any
11 documentation.
12 MS. JAMISON: No. We cleaned out her room
13 and there was nothing there.
14 MR. HUGHES: No revocation, right?
15 MS. JAMISON: Right.
16 MS. FARNER-STRASBAUGH: In the information
17 that was provided with the petition was a letter from
18 Attorney Martin Reiley referring to the Last Will and
19 Testament of Helen McRae which states, I have recently
20 prepared a will for your mother. At her request, I enclose
21 herewith a copy for you. Please note that you are one of
22 the executors who are nominated to serve in the event of her
23 death. Mrs. McRae has retained the original will among her
24 records.
25 MS. JAMISON: We didn't find anything.
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1 MS. FARNER-STRASBAUGH: Can you tell me what
2 you have done as far as a search for them?
3 MS. JAMISON: We emptied out her desk in her
4 room. She was living at Cumberland Crossings. We took
5 everything out of her room after she died, and there was no
6 document.
7 MS. FARNER-STRASBAUGH: Did you want to
8 answer that also, please?
9 MR. McRAE: I received that letter. I was
10 the addressee on it. I have searched my own personal
11 records and have not located any other documents.
12 MS. FARNER-STRASBAUGH: Do you have any
13 evidence to present today to show the presumption of
14 revocation of the last will was not at her hands?
15 MR. HUGHES: Not other than what we have in
16 the petition is the letter from the attorney indicating that
17 it was he had the original, he had sent that to her. Mr.
18 McRae didn't have a copy. Mrs. Jamison doesn't have a copy.
19 As they indicated, they went through a
20 thorough search of all of her records, of which they had
21 been familiar with those things over the last several years
22 of her life, and have seen nothing or heard nothing from her
23 relative to having either revoked or executed her will.
24 MS. FARNER-STRASBAUGH: And, finally, where
25 was her last family principal residence?
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1 MS. JAMISON: Cumberland Crossings or --
2 MS. FARNER-STRASBAUGH: So she had been there
3 for quite some time. So she had no plans on going back to
4 her homestead.
5 MS. JAMISON: No. She sold her real estate a
6 long time ago.
7 MS. FARNER-STRASBAUGH: That was located In
8 what county?
9 MS. JAMISON: I think the last house she
10 actually owned was in Bedford County.
11 MR. HUGHES: Bedford County.
12 MS. JAMISON: Blue Knob Resort.
13 MS. FARNER-STRASBAUGH: Are there any other
14 family siblings that are named in the will?
15 MS. JAMISON: No.
16 MR. McRAE: No.
17 MS. FARNER-STRASBAUGH: Just the two of you.
18 MS. JAMISON: We are hoping.
19 MR. HUGHES: They are the only two that have
20 come forward.
21 MS. JAMISON: We were looking out in the
22 waiting room, but --
23 MS. FARNER-STRASBAUGH: Have you located a
24 safe deposit box?
25 MS. JAMISON: She didn't have one.
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1 MS. FARNER-STRASBAUGH: Have you made any
2 effort to locate --
3 MS. JAMISON: We have a, a storage area in
4 our house, and there was nothing there that was an original
5 of anything. It was all copies. But she was 92, she
6 wasn't, you know, she wasn't functioning all that well. So
7 anything could have happened.
8 MS. FARNER-STRASBAUGH: The two persons who
9 witnessed the will, are they available?
10 MR. HUGHES: We are presuming that the people
11 that had witnessed it were from Mr. Reiley's office. Mr.
12 Reiley being one of them and, of course, he is the one that
13 sent the letter. And both of them being in Bedford.
14 So at the time the will was executed it was
15 in Bedford, Pennsylvania, which is the reason we had
16 requested a copy of the correspondence from Mr. -- our
17 office did contact Mr. Reiley to inquire as to whether he
18 had anything in his file. And he indicated that the only
19 thing he had he had sent us was the copy of the letter which
20 Mr. McRae received.
21 MS. FARNER-STRASBAUGH: Has the decedent
22 discussed or talked about the will with either of you in the
23 past?
24 MS. JAMISON: She always told us it was a
25 50/50 split forever. You know, that was her intent, that
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1 any estate would be split in the middle.
2 MS. FARNER-STRASBAUGH: But she didn't tell
3 you where she moved it when she moved.
4 MS. JAMISON: I never saw the original
5 document. All we have is the copy.
6 MR. McRAE: What I have in my files.
7 MS. FARNER-STRASBAUGH: I have another
8 question coming.
9 MS. JAMISON: Okay.
10 MS. FARNER-STRASBAUGH: In closing, what
11 proof do you have to offer that the presumption of it being
12 destroyed was not the case?
13 MR. HUGHES: Well, they have testified to the
14 fact that we could not find anything. Usually when you do a
15 new will, you have language in the new will which evidences
16 the fact that you are revoking any prior wills or codicil.
17 We didn't find any evidence of any other will that she may
18 have drafted, either a copy, original, or otherwise any
19 other document which would typically say I am going to
20 revoke this instrument, like you would a power of attorney
21 or other type of estate planning.
22 MS. FARNER-STRASBAUGH: Would it have been
23 possible for her to revoke the will without preparing a new
24 will?
25 MR. HUGHES: No. She would have needed to
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1 have some document in writing. She could have taken the
2 original, written across the original, if we had found
3 something to that effect, or she would have had to have a
4 separate document evidencing that she is revoking that,
5 whether it be through a holographic will or something else.
6 Again, we could find nothing that mentioned anything about
7 the disposition of her assets other than the copy that we
8 have.
9 MS. FARNER-STRASBAUGH: We have two options
10 today. The first being petitioning for Letters of
11 Administration and not admitting this. And the second is
12 waiting for my determination as to whether I intend to
13 accept it as a will, in fact, in that it is a copy. Which
14 I'm not making that decision today.
15 MR. HUGHES: Right.
16 MS. FARNER-STRASBAUGH: It will be based on,
17 I have to do some research and make some determinations.
18 That would corne to you in the form of writing, a written
19 opinion in the next few days.
20 MR. HUGHES: Right. We would be fine with
21 that. I mean the bottom line is it probably will not change
22 anything one way or the other because these are the only two
23 children.
24 MS. FARNER-STRASBAUGH: So it's your choice,
25 would you want to just do Letters of Administration today?
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1 MR. HUGHES: I would rather have you, because
2 we have the will, we believe that is what it is there, we do
3 have a trust that is involved that is mentioned in the will.
4 Therefore, for clarity purposes, the trust, and for the
5 Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, as far as taxability is
6 concerned --
7 MS. FARNER-STRASBAUGH: Right.
8 MR. HUGHES: -- that writing becomes very
9 important in terms of what is in the will. It mentions the
10 trust specifically. Otherwise, you know, we take our
11 inheritance tax return up to the Commonwealth, they "look at
12 it, and they are not going to have any clue where that trust
13 is corning from.
14 At least in this case, it specifically
15 mentions that trust, which we thought would be helpful.
16 Which would be another reason we would want to make sure a
17 copy was treated as the original.
18 MS. FARNER-STRASBAUGH: I did have one other
19 question. What do you think the value of the estate is?
20 Estimated.
21 MR. HUGHES: She just took my petition there.
22 MS. FARNER-STRASBAUGH: The petition is
23 showing 8,500.
24 MR. HUGHES: Well, in terms of what we just
25 probated for, as far as probate assets, that is -- if you
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1 want the taxability for probate assets, that is correct.
2 But, like I mentioned, we do have some trust assets that
3 will be taxable as part of the estate. So there wasn't a
4 lot of personalty. There wasn't a lot of other assets,
5 specifically other than, again, the trust. Which is
6 again
7 MS. FARNER-STRASBAUGH: I know this is
8 probably not an extremely intelligent question. But did you
9 check with the counselors at the nursing home to ask if they
10 had kept any of her papers for safekeeping?
11 MS. JAMISON: They are not allowed to have
12 any private possessions of any of the residents.
13 MR. HUGHES: They have a policy out at
14 Cumberland Crossings where they won't keep anything because,
15 otherwise, people would be coming back to them saying they
16 lost it. And so they made a policy decision not to keep
17 anything.
18 MS. FARNER-STRASBAUGH: Very often at
19 admission they will ask the location of the will on an
20 application is one of the reasons that I ask the question.
21 MS. JAMISON: They may have asked that. But,
22 as I said, we had a copy in our of this will in our
23 cupboard at home. So I am sure we wouldn't have, you know,
24 I doubt that we would have looked around for an original
25 when we had the copy.
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1 MR. HUGHES: I guess what she is asking if,
2 in fact, they had on the application a specific location
3 which might have given us some clue as to where that
4 original might have been.
5 MS. JAMISON: She moved from -- she lived in
6 an independent cottage there originally. And then it became
7 very clear that her judgment wasn't good and she was doing
8 some dangerous things. So they moved her in a split second
9 up to the assisted living thing. We didn't have a lot of
10 time to process that.
11 I mean the only thing they really asked us
12 for was the power of attorney, which at that point we got.
13 So it wasn't your normal admission to the assisted living
14 program.
15 MS. FARNER-STRASBAUGH: So her things were
16 packed by someone else.
17 MS. JAMISON: No. We packed her possessions
18 in her cottage, and there wasn't anything there.
19 MS. FARNER-STRASBAUGH: There wasn't.
20 MS. JAMISON: No.
21 MR. HUGHES: But everything that was in the
22 cottage, Nancy, you went through, right, and disposed of
23 those things before she went into the assisted living.
24 MS. JAMISON: Right.
25 MR. HUGHES: And you didn't find anything.
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MS. JAMISON:
MR. HUGHES:
MS. JAMISON:
No.
Other than the copy we have.
Right. Which we already had at
that point. So, no, we moved most of her stuff up to the
assisted living program. What she couldn't fit in, we kept
at home.
MS. FARNER-STRASBAUGH: And you have been
through those things and the original will was not there.
MS. JAMISON: Yeah.
MS. FARNER-STRASBAUGH: In closing, do you
have anything else you would like to add, sir?
MR. HUGHES: No. Other than just what is in
our petition of record, which would be the will and the
letter from Mr. Reiley.
MS. FARNER-STRASBAUGH: Very good. I thank
you for corning in to give your testimony today. And we will
make a decision at some point and forward the rendered
opinion to this gentleman.
MS. JAMISON:
MR. HUGHES:
MS. JAMISON:
Okay.
That sounds good.
Thanks.
MR. McRAE: Thank you.
MR. HUGHES: Thanks for your time.
Appreciate it.
(Whereupon, the proceeding concluded at 1:55 p.m.)
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