Source: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-ared-3_19-cv-00346/USCOURTS-ared-3_19-cv-00346-34/pdf.json

Nature of Suit Code: 190
Nature of Suit: Other Contract Actions
Cause of Action: 28:1441 Petition for Removal- Fraud

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IN THE UNITED ST ATES DISTRICT COURT 

EASTERN DISTRICT OF ARKANSAS 

NORTHERN DIVISION 

IN RE ELIJAH AND MARY 

STINY TRUSTS 

AMENDED ORDER 

No. 3:19-cv-346-DPM 

1. Elijah G. Stiny and Mary Moore Stiny had each been married 

before and had children from those marriages. He was much older and 

much wealthier when they married. In 2000, as part of a 

comprehensive estate plan, they created a trust. Mr. Stiny' s long-time 

lawyer prepared the instrument. The main trust assets were two 

apartment complexes in Burbank, California. Mr. Stiny owned and 

maintained these assets for years. They were worth many millions of 

dollars. In broad strokes, the trust was to provide for Mr. and Mrs. 

Stiny, and then the surviving spouse, eventually with sub-trusts for tax 

reasons, with the corpus being divided equally between Mr. Stiny's 

family members (the Stiny Share) and Mrs. Stiny's family members (the 

Moore share) after both had died. With the help of Mr. Stiny's lawyer, 

the Stinys amended their trust three times in the following eight years, 

mostly to change the distribution particulars within the Stiny share and 

the Moore share. Elijah Nicholas Stiny is Mr. Stiny's only son. Over 

time, his potential share was reduced from 15% of the Stiny half of the 

corpus to a straight $25,000. 

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Mr. Stiny died in October 2010. Mrs. Stiny fell out with Mr. Stiny' s 

long-time lawyer over trust-related issues and hired new counsel. That 

new lawyer (Robert Smith) began trust administration, including 

sending various notices to beneficiaries between March and October of 

2011. 

Mrs. Stiny' s handling of trust-related issues was, at best, lax. At 

some point after Mr. Stiny died, she moved to Arkansas, her home state. 

She involved her daughter, Rena Wood, in managing the apartments 

and the trusts. Mrs. Stiny became mentally incompetent in late 2015. 

There was protracted litigation in this Court about Wood's handling of 

the trust and her mother's affairs. Centennial Bank v. Wood, 

No. 3:17-cv-226-DPM (E.D. Ark.); In re Guardianship of Mary Moore 

Stiny, 3:17-cv-227-DPM (E.D. Ark.). This Court eventually appointed 

G.S. Brant Perkins to serve as co-trustee with Wood. Mrs. Stiny died in 

June 2019. Then, in early 2021, Wood died in a car accident. With this 

Court's approval, the apartment complexes were sold. The trust now 

contains approximately twenty-two million dollars. These are the 

background facts, which are undisputed. 

The current litigation has two layers. First, Elijah Nicholas Stiny 

challenges the formation of the trust, mainly arguing undue influence. 

To avoid confusion, the Court will call him ENS. He claims that Mrs. 

Stiny took advantage of his father, pushing ENS and his sister out of 

their roles helping manage the apartments and other family 

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investments. She limited contact between Mr. Stiny and his children. 

Over time, ENS says, Mrs. Stiny bent the aging Mr. Stiny to her will, 

including favoring her family in many ways. Second, there are 

construction and administration issues. The trustee asks the Court to 

construe the trust so that he can distribute the corpus. Two of Wood's 

three daughters ask the Court for a particular construction of the 

provision about their mother's share. Members of Mrs. Stiny' s 

extended family ask the Court to construe the trust such that they will 

benefit from the share designated for Mrs. Stiny' s mother, who 

predeceased her. And various Stiny grandchildren challenge the 

administration of the trust by Mrs. Stiny, Wood, and Perkins, arguing 

defects and shortcomings. The Court scheduled phased trials, with the 

trust contest first. 

Perkins (now sole trustee), Beauchamp (the personal 

representative of Wood's estate), and Woods' daughters moved for 

summary judgment on ENS' s petition contesting the trust. They 

argued that it was untimely under California law, which everyone 

agrees governs. With an inapplicable wrinkle, a beneficiary has 120 

days after service of notice that trust administration has begun to file a 

trust contest. CAL. PROB. CODE § 16061.8. The movants rely on the 

notices sent in 2011 after Mr. Stiny died. ENS responds that questions 

of fact for trial exist about whether he received proper notice. The deep 

issue is whether CAL. PROB. CODE§ 16061.?'s notice requirements are 

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satisfied when a trustee mails notice to a beneficiary's post office box. 

The Court canceled the trial in the trust contest, indicating that it 

intended to grant the motion for summary judgment and that an 

explanatory Order would follow. Doc. 205. This is that Order. 

2. On the undisputed material facts of record, there is no issue 

for trial about notice. Oglesby v. Lesan, 929 F.3d 526, 532 (8th Cir. 2019). 

Under California law, a trustee must serve notice on each beneficiary 

when administration of an irrevocable trust begins. CAL. PROB. CODE 

§ 16061.7(a)(2) & (b). Administration of the Stiny trust began at Mr. 

Stiny' s death in 2010 because the trust became irrevocable at that point. 

Doc. 186-1 at 15; CAL. PROB. CODE§ 16061.7(a)(l). "The notification by 

trustee shall be served by any of the methods described in Section 1215 

to the last known address[]" of each beneficiary. CAL. PROB. CODE 

§ 16061.7(e). The embedded statute authorizes service by various 

methods including mail. For a beneficiary at an address in the United 

States, the mail must be: 

• Sent first class; 

• By U.S. mail, in a sealed envelope with postage 

paid; and 

• "[T]he notice or other paper shall be addressed 

to [the beneficiary] at the person's place of 

business or place of residence." 

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CAL. PROB. CODE§ 1215(a)(l)(A), (a)(2) & (a)(3). Depositing the notice 

in the mail completes delivery, CAL. PROB. CODE§ 1215(a)(4), and starts 

the 120-day clock for any trust contest. CAL. PROB. CODE § 16061.8. 

Smith (Mrs. Stiny' s new lawyer) handled the notices sent about 

the Stiny trust with help from his wife, who was his secretary. The 

parties deposed Smith. He testified that his wife mailed the notice 

required under CAL. PROB. CODE § 16061.7(a) to each trust beneficiary 

by first class mail in March 2011. Mrs. Stiny provided the addresses. 

He sent ENS' s notice to Post Office Box 4382, Palm Springs, CA 92263. 

Though§ 16061.7 doesn't require proof of service of the notice, Smith 

prepared and filed a proof. It is in the record. Doc. 186-5. No question 

is raised about the substance of the notices or their adequacy. 

In July 2011, Smith filed a petition for an order dividing the trust 

into two or more separate trusts in the California Superior Court for 

Los Angeles County. Doc. 186-6. The petition contained a list of the 

names and addresses of the residual beneficiaries who were to receive 

notice of the proceedings. Doc. 186-6 at 4-6. Smith testified in his 

deposition that he sent multiple notices to these beneficiaries 

throughout the trust division proceeding. And proof of service of a 

hearing notice dated 29 August 2011 is in the record, too. Doc. 186-7. 

All these notices were sent to ENS at Post Office Box 4382, Palm 

Springs, CA 92263. Smith testified that none of the§ 16061.7 notices 

sent in March 2011, or notices sent in the 2011 trust division 

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proceedings, were returned as undeliverable. Smith retained his file, 

and it contained no indication of any mailing problem. 

ENS does not argue that he did not receive the notices. He does 

not argue that the Palm Springs post office box was an incorrect address 

for him in March or August 2011. There is no evidence of record that 

Mrs. Stiny or Smith had any other address for ENS. Patricia Sorley, 

ENS' s sister, was deposed. She offered supportive testimony about 

Mrs. Stiny's alleged undue influence over Mr. Stiny. But neither she 

nor anyone else has provided any testimony or evidence that the 

address Smith used for ENS was incorrect. ENS was not deposed and 

has not testified by affidavit. The record indicates that ENS has 

wrestled with health challenges, physical and mental, through the 

years. He is currently residing in some kind of institution, though the 

Court does not know the particulars. No record evidence indicates, and 

no argument is made, however, that ENS' s health challenges affected 

his ability to act on the notices sent in 2011. 

ENS argues that mailing notice to a post office box does not satisfy 

§ 1215(a)(3)' s address criteria: a box, he says, is neither a place of 

business nor a place of residence. This argument has textual force. The 

movants respond that the whole point of the statute is to maximize the 

chances of actual notice. And if a post office box is the last known 

address of a beneficiary, mailing notice there is acceptable and 

sufficient. This is an undecided question of California law. (There are 

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some unpublished opinions from intermediate appellate courts, but 

they cannot be cited or relied upon. CAL. R. CT. 8.1115(a)). This Court 

must therefore make an Erie-educated prediction about how the 

California Supreme Court would answer the questio~. Blankenship v. 

USA Truck, Inc., 601 F.3d 852, 856 (8th Cir. 2010). 

This Court predicts that a post office box would qualify as a place 

of residence for purposes of CAL. PROB. CODE § 1215 and § 16061.7. 

First, in a dispute about actual notice, the unquestioned premise of the 

decision was that a box qualified as a place of business under§ 1215. 

Gertner v. Superior Court, 20 Cal. App. 4th 927, 931-32 (1993). Second, 

California law authorizes service of process at a box. TransAmerica Title 

Insurance Co. v. Hendrix, 34 Cal. App. 4th 740, 745-46 (1995) (a post office 

box is a sufficient address for service under CAL. CIV. PROC. CODE 

§ 415.30 where it's the address most likely to provide actual notice); see 

also Buckelew v. Gore, 2020 WL 4188166, at *5 (S.D. Cal. 21 July 2020) 

(mailing process to the post office box of the defendant's place of 

employment is sufficient service by mail under CAL. CIV. PROC. CODE 

§ 415.30). Third, California applies a substantial compliance standard 

on service-related issues. Buckelew, 2020 WL 4188166, at *4. People 

prefer to get their mail at the post office for various reasons. The point 

of these statutes, as the movants say, is to insure, insofar as practicable, 

actual notice. ENS' s reading of § 16061.7 and § 1215 would eliminate 

the mail as a vehicle for service of notice where a beneficiary's last 

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known address is a post office box. And that result runs aground on 

the holdings and tenor of the California precedent about notice and 

service. 

Smith got one response after he mailed the notices to the Stiny 

trust residual beneficiaries. He testified that he had a distinct memory 

of it. He got a telephone call from a man who said he was Mr. Stiny's 

son. Of course Smith could not be certain if this person was ENS. The 

caller asked for a picture owned by his father, a picture of a boat. Smith 

described the caller as "emotional and weepy," with a lot of personal 

information about Mr. Stiny. And the caller told Smith exactly where 

to find the picture of the boat. Doc. 186-8 at 15 & 31. 

The trustee's notices to ENS by first class mail to Post Office Box 

4382 in Palm Springs satisfied CAL. PROB. CODE§ 16061.7(e) and§ 1215. 

A reasonable fact finder could reach only one conclusion on the record 

presented: ENS received notice that trust administration began in 

March 2011 and notice that trust administration was ongoing during 

the next several months. ENS's November 2020 trust contest, which 

was filed some nine years later, was therefore untimely. CAL. PROB. 

CODE§ 16061.8. 

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The joint motion for summary judgment, Doc. 186, is granted. 

Elijah Nicholas Stiny's amended petition is dismissed with prejudice. 

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So Ordered. 

D.P. Marshall Jr. 

United States District Judge 

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