J-A02018-23

NON-PRECEDENTIAL DECISION - SEE SUPERIOR COURT I.O.P. 65.37

SHARLEEN M. RELLICK-SMITH 

Appellant

v.

BETTY J. RELLICK AND KIMBERLY V. 

VASIL

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 IN THE SUPERIOR COURT OF

 PENNSYLVANIA

 No. 630 WDA 2022

Appeal from the Order Entered April 22, 2022

In the Court of Common Pleas of Indiana County Orphans’ Court at 

No(s): 31-14-0490

BEFORE: BOWES, J., MURRAY, J., and PELLEGRINI, J.*

MEMORANDUM BY BOWES, J.: FILED: May 17, 2023

Sharleen M. Rellick-Smith appeals from the order that dismissed for lack 

of standing her claims of breach of fiduciary duty brought against Betty J. 

Rellick and Kimberly V. Vasil (collectively “Defendants”), challenging actions 

they undertook as attorneys-in-fact for Rose Rellick (“Decedent”). We reverse 

and remand for further proceedings. 

We begin with a summary of this case’s protracted history. Rellick is 

the sister of Decedent, while Vasil and Rellick-Smith are the daughters of 

another of Decedent’s siblings. In March 2006, Decedent granted power of 

attorney (“POA”) to Rellick and Vasil. In August 2006, Decedent created two 

certificate-of-deposit accounts (“CDs”) at First Commonwealth Bank. Each CD 

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* Retired Senior Judge assigned to the Superior Court.
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had an initial value of approximately $150,000 and was issued to Decedent 

“or” Rellick “or” Vasil “or” Rellick-Smith. In 2009, Rellick and Vasil used the 

POA to remove Rellick-Smith’s name from the CDs. Decedent died at the end 

of 2012, and Rellick and Vasil thereafter withdrew the money from the CDs, 

then totaling more than $350,000. 

In October 2014, Rellick-Smith filed a complaint against Rellick and Vasil 

asserting that Defendants abused their POA and thwarted Decedent’s intent 

that Rellick-Smith receive one-third of the value of the CDs upon her death. 

Defendants promptly filed an answer to the complaint raising no affirmative 

defenses. In February 2015, Defendants moved to dismiss the action 

alternatively because Rellick-Smith lacked standing to challenge Defendants’

performance as Decedent’s POA or that the statute of limitations barred the 

claims. The orphans’ court concluded that Defendants had waived the statute 

of limitations defense by not including it in their responsive pleading, but

agreed that Rellick-Smith lacked standing, and therefore dismissed the action.

On appeal, this Court treated Defendants’ motion as preliminary 

objections. Accordingly, we deemed the factual allegations of Rellick-Smith’s 

complaint to be true and applied the standard of review for preliminary 

objections, which requires us to affirm only if it was clear and free from doubt 

that Rellick-Smith would be unable to establish a right to relief. See RellickSmith v. Rellick (“Rellick-Smith I”), 147 A.3d 897, 901 (Pa.Super. 2016). 

Referencing the allegations of Rellick-Smith’s complaint and the exhibits 
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thereto, this Court indicated that “the funds in the CDs were held ‘in trust for’

Rellick-Smith.” Id. at n.5. This Court concluded that Rellick-Smith, as a trust 

account beneficiary, had standing to challenge her removal from the CDs. In 

particular, the Rellick-Smith I Court was persuaded that the beneficiary of a 

Totten trust account has “a sufficient interest during the life of the depositor 

to entitle him to recover the money after the death of the depositor where the 

trust was not revoked by the depositor” and a third party wrongfully removed 

money from the account “before the death of the depositor and without his 

consent.” Id. at 903 (quoting Scott, TRUSTS (4th Ed. 1987) § 58.4, p. 224). 

The Court therefore held as follows:

[W]e conclude that Rellick-Smith, as a beneficiary of the CDs 

named by the decedent/principal during her life, had standing to 

challenge the propriety of the Defendants’ unilateral action, as 

agents under the POA agreement, in changing the decedent’s 

beneficiary designation, to the Defendants’ benefit. To not afford 

named beneficiaries of a Totten trust standing to sue in 

circumstances such as those presented in the instant case could 

lead to an absurd and unjust result. Moreover, Rellick-Smith has 

met the [generally applicable requirements for standing]; she is 

certainly an aggrieved party as she has a substantial, direct and 

immediate interest in the outcome of this litigation.

Id. at 904 (cleaned up). This Court did not consider the alternative argument 

that the statute of limitations barred Rellick-Smith’s claim, noting that neither 

party addressed that issue on appeal. Id. at 901 n.12. 

On remand, the case was reassigned to a different judge of the orphans’

court. Defendants, through new counsel, filed a motion to amend their 

answer, seeking, inter alia, to raise the statute of limitations as an affirmative 
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defense. The orphans’ court granted the motion, and the case proceeded to 

trial. In that proceeding, Rellick-Smith presented, inter alia, the testimony of 

Decedent’s tax preparer, Ann Marcoaldi, who indicated that she advised 

Decedent to combine various accounts into the CDs as a testamentary device 

that Decedent would own during her lifetime and Rellick, Vasil, and RellickSmith would share equally upon Decedent’s death, minimizing the inheritance 

tax. Id. at 20, 30, 40-41. Ms. Marcoaldi further indicated that she and RellickSmith learned in 2009 that Rellick had exercised the POA to remove RellickSmith from the CDs and undertook an investigation to learn why. Id. at 56-

57, 77. Rellick-Smith testified that she brought this action to enforce 

Decedent’s right to have her testamentary wishes honored by her POA agents. 

Id. at 149-50.

Defendants, for their part, sought to establish that Rellick-Smith lacked

standing pursuant to the Rellick-Smith I exception to the general rule that 

only a personal representative may pursue the claims of a decedent. In that 

vein, they presented testimony from several witnesses to establish that the 

CDs were not Totten trust accounts, but rather joint accounts. Id. at 201-07, 

220-25. Defendants also defended the substantive claim that they had 

breached their fiduciary duties to Decedent by introducing evidence that 

Rellick-Smith had been in dire financial straits before Decedent’s death, that 

she had in 2009 cashed out a different CD on which her name appeared along 

with Decedent’s name, and that in 2012 she had attempted to secure a 
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$135,000 mortgage on Decedent’s interest in real property. Id. at 129-30, 

161-74. Defendants took the position that removing Rellick-Smith’s name 

from the CDs at issue was, under these circumstances, a proper exercise of 

their duty to protect Decedent’s assets. Id. at 250-54. 

Ultimately, the orphans’ court credited Ms. Marcoaldi’s testimony that 

Rellick-Smith learned in September 2009 that Defendants had removed her 

name from the CDs, and thus ruled that her 2014 claim for breach of fiduciary 

duty was barred by the two-year statute of limitations codified at 42 Pa.C.S. 

§ 5524(7). This Court affirmed, holding that permitting Defendants to plead 

the statute of limitations as a defense after the prior judge had deemed it 

waived did not violate the law of the case doctrine, and that the finding that 

the claim was barred was supported by the record. See Rellick-Smith v. 

Rellick (“Rellick-Smith II”), 229 A.3d 390 (Pa.Super. 2020) (nonprecedential decision at 6-10). However, our Supreme Court reversed this 

Court, concluding instead that the inconsistent rulings about Defendant’s 

ability to belatedly raise a statute-of-limitations defense violated the 

coordinate jurisdiction component of the law-of-the-case doctrine. See 

Rellick-Smith v. Rellick (“Rellick-Smith III”), 261 A.3d 506, 518-19 (Pa. 

2021) (Opinion Announcing the Judgment of the Court). Accordingly, our High 

Court remanded the matter to the orphans’ court for further proceedings.

Following a post-remand status conference, the orphans’ court 

requested and received supplemental post-trial briefs from the parties. Based 
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upon its review of the evidence offered at the 2018 trial, the orphans’ court 

concluded that the CDs were joint accounts, not trust accounts, pursuant to 

20 Pa.C.S. § 6303 (discussed fully infra). Therefore, the orphans’ court 

concluded that Rellick-Smith lacked “standing to challenge the actions of Betty 

Rellick and/or Kimberly Vasil acting in the capacity of [Decedent’s] agent 

pursuant to the [POA] executed by [Decedent.]” Orphans’ Court Opinion, 

4/22/22, at 22. Accordingly, the orphans’ court dismissed Rellick-Smith’s 

claim.

Rellick-Smith filed a timely notice of appeal, and both she and the 

orphans’ court complied with Pa.R.A.P. 1925.1 Rellick-Smith presents the 

following questions for our examination:

I. Whether the [orphans’] court erred by determining that the 

Appellant did not have standing.

II. Whether the [orphans’] court erred by failing to reach a 

decision on the merits of the action, and thus failed to grant 

Appellant appropriate relief.

Rellick-Smith’s brief at 7 (cleaned up). 

We begin with a review of the applicable legal principles. First, we note 

our standard of review:

When an appellant challenges a decree entered by the orphans’

court, our standard of review requires that we be deferential to 

the findings of the orphans’ court. 

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1 The orphans’ court adopted its April 22, 2022 opinion as its Rule 1925(a) 

opinion. See Order, 6/16/22. 
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We must determine whether the record is free from legal error 

and the court’s factual findings are supported by the evidence. 

Because the orphans’ court sits as the fact-finder, it determines 

the credibility of the witnesses and, on review, we will not reverse 

its credibility determinations absent an abuse of that discretion. 

However, we are not constrained to give the same deference to 

any resulting legal conclusions. Where the rules of law on which 

the court relied are palpably wrong or clearly inapplicable, we will 

reverse the court’s decree.

In re Estate of Schwartz, 275 A.3d 1032, 1033–34 (Pa.Super. 2022) 

(cleaned up). 

The trial court disposed of Rellick-Smith’s claim by ruling that she lacked 

standing to pursue a claim that Defendants breached their fiduciary duties 

owed to Decedent. “Threshold issues of standing are questions of law; thus, 

our standard of review is de novo and our scope of review is plenary.” RellickSmith I, supra at 901 (cleaned up).

We have summarized the generally-applicable rules of standing as 

follows:

In Pennsylvania, the doctrine of standing is a prudential, 

judicially-created principle designed to winnow out litigants who 

have no direct interest in a judicial matter. For standing to exist, 

the underlying controversy must be real and concrete, such that 

the party initiating the legal action has, in fact, been “aggrieved.” 

The core concept of standing is that a person who is not adversely 

affected in any way by the matter he seeks to challenge is not 

“aggrieved” thereby and has no standing to obtain a judicial 

resolution to his challenge. A party is aggrieved for purposes of 

establishing standing when the party has a substantial, direct and 

immediate interest in the outcome of litigation. A party’s interest 

is substantial when it surpasses the interest of all citizens in 

procuring obedience to the law; it is direct when the asserted 

violation shares a causal connection with the alleged harm; finally, 

a party’s interest is immediate when the causal connection with 

the alleged harm is neither remote nor speculative.
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In re Nadzam, 203 A.3d 215, 220-21 (Pa.Super. 2019) (cleaned up). 

We thus begin by examining the nature of the underlying controversy 

and Rellick-Smith’s connection to it. Although the pleadings were not a model 

of clarity, Rellick-Smith sought to litigate Decedent’s claim that Defendants 

breached their fiduciary duties to Decedent. By statute, any action or 

proceeding to enforce a right of a decedent “may be brought by or against his 

personal representative alone or with other parties as though the decedent 

were alive.” 20 Pa.C.S. § 3373. Our Supreme Court has long held that “only

the personal representative of a deceased party in interest stands in the shoes 

of such decedent.” In re Kilpatrick’s Estate, 84 A.2d 339, 341 (Pa. 1951) 

(cleaned up, emphasis added). “Legatees, spouses or next of kin of that 

decedent really have no such interest[.]” Id. 

It was on that basis that the orphans’ court initially ruled that RellickSmith lacked standing to proceed in this action. See Orphans’ Court Opinion, 

6/22/15, at 4-5. However, this Court in Rellick I vacated that ruling and 

decided, as a matter of first impression, that a beneficiary of a tentative, or 

“Totten,” trust account has standing to sue Defendants directly for a breach 

of duty owed to Decedent that caused injury to her tentative interest in the 

account. See Rellick-Smith I, supra at 903-04. 

The orphans’ court ultimately held that the CDs were not Totten trusts, 

but instead joint accounts as created and titled, as viewed by First 

Commonwealth Bank, and as defined by the Multiple-Party Account Act 
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(“MPAA”). See Orphans’ Court Opinion, 4/22/22, at 17. It discerned no 

evidence that Decedent had instead meant to fund the CDs in trust for Rellick, 

Vasil, and Rellick-Smith such that she intended to create Totten trust 

accounts. Id. Since the beneficiary standing recognized in Rellick-Smith I

therefore did not pertain, the orphans’ court concluded that Rellick-Smith 

lacked standing to challenge the actions of Decedent’s POAs because the 

principal’s right to enforce that fiduciary obligation passed exclusively to her 

personal representative. Id. at 21-22.

Rellick-Smith maintains that, regardless of the form of account, “all 

individuals named on the accounts or involved in their creation knew the clear 

intention of [Decedent] for the purpose of the account” was for the funds to 

be to shared equally among the three beneficiaries upon Decedent’s death. 

See Rellick-Smith’s brief at 17. Rellick-Smith insists that, since she presented 

clear and convincing evidence that Decedent’s intent was “to have the money 

put in the CDs to be divided evenly between the parties” upon her death, 

Rellick-Smith “meets the standing burden established by the courts.” Id. at 

21, 23. 

Rellick and Vasil argue that, although she does not explicitly state it, 

Rellick-Smith’s position is “that despite the CDs being titled as joint accounts, 

there was clear and convincing evidence that [Decedent] intended the CDs to 

be Totten trust[s], and pursuant to 20 Pa.C.S. § 6303(a) the [orphans’] court 

should have found the CDs to be Totten trusts.” Defendants’ brief at 7 
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(cleaned up). Defendants assert that Rellick-Smith’s arguments as to 

Decedent’s intent are based upon viewing the evidence in a light most 

favorable to her position, while this Court must instead consider whether the 

certified record contains sufficient evidence to support the factual findings of 

the orphans’ court. Id. at 8-11. Defendants maintain that Rellick-Smith failed 

to meet her burden of proving that Decedent “intended the joint accounts to 

be anything other than joint accounts,” and, consequently, she lacked 

standing based upon In re Kilpatrick’s Estate and its progeny. Id. at 11, 

15-17. 

Although she does not present the most straightforward argument, 

Rellick-Smith’s position appears to be that, in deciding the issue of standing, 

the orphans’ court and Defendants attach unwarranted importance on the type 

of multi-party accounts Decedent created. Instead, Rellick-Smith asserts that 

the issue is whether the Decedent’s intent to utilize the CDs as testamentary 

devices to pass assets to Rellick-Smith imbued Rellick-Smith with a 

substantial, direct, and immediate interest in the outcome of litigation such 

that she is an aggrieved party with standing to sue. 

The MPAA was “designed to reduce certain questions concerning many

forms of joint accounts and the so-called Totten trust account.” 20 Pa.C.S. 

§ 6301 Comment. Pursuant to the MPAA, with exceptions not relevant here, 

any account with multiple parties is “either a joint account or a trust account.” 

20 Pa.C.S. § 6301. Those two types of accounts are defined as follows:
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“Joint account” means an account payable on request to one or 

more of two or more parties whether or not mention is made of 

any right of survivorship.

. . . .

“Trust account” means an account in the name of one or more 

parties as trustee for one or more beneficiaries where the 

relationship is established by the form of the account and the 

deposit agreement with the financial institution and there is no 

subject of the trust other than the sum on deposit in the account; 

it is not essential that payment to the beneficiary be mentioned in 

the deposit agreement. A trust account does not include a regular 

trust account under a testamentary trust or a trust agreement 

which has significance apart from the account, or a fiduciary 

account arising from a fiduciary relation such as attorney-client.

Id. The ownership of multi-party accounts while all implicated individuals are 

alive is governed by § 6303, which provides as follows:

(a) Joint account.--A joint account belongs, during the lifetime 

of all parties, to the parties in proportion to the net contributions 

by each to the sum on deposit, unless there is clear and convincing 

evidence of a different intent.

(b) Trust account.--Unless a contrary intent is manifested by 

the terms of the account or the deposit agreement or there is 

other clear and convincing evidence of an irrevocable trust, a trust 

account belongs beneficially to the trustee during his lifetime, and 

if two or more parties are named as trustees of the account during 

their lifetimes beneficial rights as between them are governed by 

subsection (a). If there is an irrevocable trust, the account 

belongs beneficially to the beneficiary.

20 Pa.C.S. § 6303. Concerning the right of survivorship, the MPAA states:

(a) Joint account.--Any sum remaining on deposit at the death 

of a party to a joint account belongs to the surviving party or 

parties as against the estate of the decedent unless there is clear 

and convincing evidence of a different intent at the time the 

account is created. If there are two or more surviving parties, 

their respective ownerships during lifetime shall be in proportion 

to their previous ownership interests under section 6303 (relating 
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to ownership during lifetime) augmented by an equal per capita 

share for each survivor of any interest the decedent may have 

owned in the account immediately before his death; and the right 

of survivorship continues between the surviving parties.

(b) Trust account.--At the death of the trustee or the survivor 

of two or more trustees, any sum remaining on deposit belongs to 

the person or persons named as beneficiaries, if surviving, or to 

the survivor or survivors of them if one or more die before the 

trustee or last surviving trustee, unless there is clear and 

convincing evidence of a contrary intent; if two or more 

beneficiaries survive, there is no right of survivorship in event of 

death of any beneficiary thereafter unless the terms of the account 

or deposit agreement expressly provide for survivorship between 

them.

20 Pa.C.S. § 6304. 

In the instant case, it is uncontroverted that Decedent created and 

funded the CDs as testamentary devices. Since she sought to minimize the 

inheritance taxes, Decedent opted to use joint “or” accounts, instead of trust 

accounts. See N.T. Trial, 12/3-4/18, at 40-41, 224-25. Plainly, the CDs, 

payable to Decedent or Rellick or Vasil or Rellick-Smith, were facially joint 

accounts as defined by the MPAA. See 20 Pa.C.S. § 6301. In that respect, 

the Rellick-Smith I Court’s acceptance, for purposes of deciding preliminary 

objections, that the CDs were trust accounts was ultimately incorrect. 

However, the distinctions between joint accounts and trust accounts do 

not warrant a different standing analysis. As indicated above, the RellickSmith I Court was persuaded by the following reasoning:

Where a third person wrongfully withdraws money from the 

account before the death of the depositor and without his consent, 

the beneficiary can, after the death of the depositor maintain a 

suit against him for the money so withdrawn. The beneficiary had 
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a sufficient interest during the life of the depositor to entitle him 

to recover the money after the death of the depositor where the 

trust was not revoked by the depositor.

Rellick-Smith I, supra at 903 (quoting Scott, TRUSTS (4th Ed. 1987) § 58.4, 

p. 224). 

This Court offered the following description of a trust account:

One who deposits money in a savings account in her own name in 

trust for another establishes a Totten trust. The name is derived 

from In re Totten, the New York Court of Appeals decision widely 

credited with first conceiving the notion of a tentative trust. A 

Totten trust allows the depositor to retain complete control of the 

fund during his life and yet secure to the beneficiary any balance 

standing in the account at the death of the depositor. Totten 

trusts are essentially a poor man’s will, a judicial creation that, 

strictly speaking, is neither a will nor a trust but are fairly 

obviously testamentary transfers.

Rellick-Smith I, supra at 899 n.5 (cleaned up, emphasis added). Our 

Supreme Court also described a joint account as “a poor man’s will.” 

Deutsch, Larrimore & Farnish, P.C. v. Johnson, 848 A.2d 137, 142 (Pa. 

2004). In Deutsch, the High Court explained:

One who knowledgeably creates a joint account with another 

arguably does so with the present intent to employ the account’s 

survivorship characteristic in substitution for a testamentary 

device. Furthermore, accounts with right of survivorship 

provisions are often set up to allow caretakers to assist senior 

citizens with the management of their finances. Their wellplanned financial protection can best be honored by adhering to 

the statutory presumption created by [§] 6303. Like other 

testamentary devices, creation of a joint account, without more, 

accomplishes no present transfer of title to property. If, as in this 

case, one person deposits all sums in the joint account, this 

arrangement contemplates transfer of title to those funds to the 

other person or persons named on the account upon the death of 

the depositor. Moreover, the creator of a joint account, like the 

maker of a will and unlike the giver of a gift, may change his or 
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her mind prior to death. These considerations suggest that joint 

accounts share more in the character of testamentary devices 

than they do in the character of present transfers of property, or 

gifts.

Id. at 143-44 (cleaned up). 

Hence, the two types of MPAA accounts are both testamentary in nature, 

with the depositor retaining ownership of the account funds during her lifetime 

while identifying beneficiaries who will take ownership of the assets upon the 

depositor’s death outside the probate process. The difference between the 

two is whether the depositor wishes to be the only person with access to the 

account during her lifetime, or whether the death beneficiaries will also have 

access to the funds while they are still owned by the depositor. We fail to see 

how this difference gives the tentative beneficiary of a joint account any less 

of “a substantial, direct and immediate interest” in litigating the depositor’s 

claim for breach of fiduciary duty against her POA agents than the tentative 

beneficiary of a trust account. Rellick-Smith I, supra at 904. Both types of 

beneficiaries have the same “sufficient interest during the life of the depositor 

to entitle him to recover the money after the death of the depositor where the 

[account] was not revoked by the depositor.” Id. at 903 (quoting Scott, 

TRUSTS (4th Ed. 1987) § 58.4, p. 224). 

We therefore conclude that Rellick-Smith I’s ultimate holding still 

controls despite the well-founded conclusion of the orphans’ court that the 

CDs were joint accounts rather than trust accounts. Specifically, we re-phrase 

that holding as follows: Rellick-Smith, by virtue of having been granted a right 
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of survivorship in the CDs by Decedent during Decedent’s life, had standing 

to challenge the propriety of the Defendants’ unilateral action, as agents under 

the POA, in terminating Rellick-Smith’s survivorship interest to benefit 

themselves rather than Decedent. Compare with Rellick-Smith I, supra

at 904 (“Rellick-Smith, as a beneficiary of the CDs named by the 

decedent/principal during her life, had standing to challenge the propriety of 

the Defendants’ unilateral action, as agents under the POA agreement, in 

changing the decedent’s beneficiary designation, to the Defendants’ benefit.”). 

Accordingly, we are constrained to remand this case to the orphans’ 

court yet again for further proceedings. Specifically, the orphans’ court must 

decide the merits of Rellick-Smith’s claim that Defendants violated their 

fiduciary duties to Decedent by removing Rellick-Smith as a party to the CD 

accounts. We leave it to the sound discretion of the orphans’ court whether 

it needs to receive additional evidence or briefing on the matter or whether it 

can make a determination based upon the record already created.

Order reversed. Case remanded for further proceedings. Jurisdiction 

relinquished. 

Judge Pellegrini joins this Memorandum.

Judge Murray concurs in the result.
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Judgment Entered.

Joseph D. Seletyn, Esq.

Prothonotary

Date: 5/17/2023