Opinion ID: 1541581
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: The Probate Court Proceedings

Text: On February 8, 2006, defendant's father, Louis J. Giuliano, Sr., died. Shortly after the senior Mr. Giuliano's death, Patricia Lett, on behalf of the Estate of Louis J. Giuliano, Sr., filed with the Probate Court for the Town of Smithfield a petition to probate the purported will of Mr. Giuliano. [1] Ms. Lett was the named executrix of the will, which specified that after debts, expenses, and taxes were paid, tangible property designated in any letter of instructions was distributed, and jointly held accounts became the property of the living joint holders of those accounts, the residue of the decedent's estate would be distributed to a trust that the decedent and Ms. Lett had established before he created the will. The defendant (decedent's son) objected to the probate of the will, challenging the authenticity of the testator's signature; he alleged that it was not actually his father's signature. On April 27, 2006, a hearing was held before the Probate Court. The attorney who drafted the will (the Drafting Attorney) testified at that hearing that he specifically recalled the decedent's execution of the will. In an affidavit [2] notarized by the Drafting Attorney, the signatures of two other attorneys (to whom we shall refer as Signer One and Signer Two) appeared beneath a statement that was a part of the affidavit; that statement declared (1) that the signers had, in the presence of each other, witnessed the execution of the will by the decedent and (2) that the decedent appeared to be of sound mind. At the hearing in the Probate Court, the Drafting Attorney also testified that the two persons who signed the affidavit had witnessed the execution of the will. Signer One testified that he had witnessed the decedent's execution of the will, which occurred in a conference room at his law firm; he testified, however, that he could not recall if Signer Two was present at the same time as he had witnessed the will. Signer Two testified that he did not have a specific recollection of the events that occurred during the execution of the will because so many years had passed. Signer Two did identify the witness signature as his own. Offering the Probate Court an interpretation based on the normal course of action that his law firm would have followed when a will was executed there, Signer Two testified that, based on past patterns and practices, he believed that the decedent had signed the will in his presence as well as in the presence of Signer One and that they then had signed in the presence of each other. Testimony was offered in support of defendant's challenge to the authenticity of the decedent's signature that appeared on the will. The decedent's former wife, his daughter, and his son (defendant) all identified documents on which the decedent's signature appeared. Curtis Baggett, a handwriting expert, compared documents containing the decedent's known signature with the signature on the will, and he concluded that the signature on the will was not the decedent's own. He offered testimony concerning his methodology in examining the signatures and his findings on the technical differences between the shape of letters in the known signatures and the signature on the will. Mr. Baggett testified that it was his opinion that the signature on the will was not the true signature of Louis J. Giuliano, Sr. [3] On July 21, 2006, the judge who presided over the hearing in the Probate Court issued a written decision concerning defendant's objection to the probate of decedent's will. The judge concluded that neither side's handwriting expert was particularly persuasive, but he added that he thought the methodology that plaintiffs' expert used was more generally accepted in the field. He stated that the testimony of the three attorneys established that the signature on the will was more probably than not the signature of the decedent. Nevertheless, the judge denied plaintiffs' petition for the probate of the will on the grounds that the witnesses to the will's execution could not remember whether they had witnessed the decedent sign the will in the presence of each other or whether they signed as witnesses in the decedent's presence. The Probate Court judge found as follows: [T]he proponents have not shown more probably than not that both witnesses signed in the presence of the testator and in the presence of each other or that both witnesses were present at the same time. These are essential elements. Accordingly, the judge ruled that, because plaintiffs could not demonstrate that the statutory requirements had been met, the petition to probate the will would be denied. The judge entered an order to that effect on August 3, 2006.