Opinion ID: 1911507
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 5

Heading: gifts, advancements, or ademptions?

Text: We find no plain error in the county court's order disallowing the claimants' statements of claim. The county court held that the gifts made during the conservatorship were true gifts and not advancements in satisfaction of any devise in the will. The doctrine of advancements or ademptions applies to wills and intestate estates in Nebraska. In re Estate of McFayden, 235 Neb. 214, 454 N.W.2d 676 (1990); Neb.Rev.Stat. §§ 30-2310 and 30-2350 (Reissue 1989). Section 30-2310 applies when a person dies intestate as to all of his or her estate, and § 30-2350 applies to testamentary dispositions. Without reaching the thorny issue of which statute applies to this estate which passed in partial intestacy, we affirm the judgment of the county court for the reason that none of the gifts made by the conservator on behalf of Soule was accompanied by a contemporaneous writing declaring the gift to be an advancement as required by both §§ 30-2310 and 30-2350. Since our holding rests on the lack of a contemporaneous writing, we also need not address the issues surrounding the ability of a conservator to make advancements against, or to adeem, a testamentary devise. Section 30-2310 states that an inter vivos transfer is to be treated as an advancement against the [heir's] share of the estate only if declared in a contemporaneous writing by the decedent or acknowledged in writing by the heir to be an advancement. Section 30-2350 states in part: Property which a testator gave in his lifetime to a person is treated as a satisfaction of a devise to that person in whole or in part only if the will provides for deduction of the lifetime gift, or the testator declares in a writing contemporaneous with the gift that it is to be deducted from the devise or is in satisfaction of the devise, or the devisee acknowledges in a writing contemporaneous with the gift that it is in satisfaction. We have previously held that absent a clause in the testator's will, a contemporaneous writing, or a written acknowledgement by the devisee, inter vivos gifts cannot be deemed to be advancements under § 30-2350. In re Estate of McFayden, supra . Similarly, § 30-2310 requires a contemporaneous writing or a written acknowledgement in order to adeem an inter vivos gift to be an advancement. Soule completed two series of gifts prior to being placed under a conservatorship without any contemporaneous writing that the gifts were to be treated as advancements. Soule's will is silent regarding advancements. We question whether the court orders approving the gifts could suffice as contemporaneous writings because courts lack the power to make a will on behalf of a protected person in a conservatorship proceeding. Neb.Rev.Stat. § 30-2637(3) (Reissue 1989). However, the court orders do not contain any directives that the gifts should be treated as advancements or ademptions, and therefore the orders do not meet the demand of either § 30-2310 or § 30-2350 for a contemporaneous writing. A donor may express in the gift that the gift is an advancement. In re Estate of McFayden, supra . Therefore, as we did in In re Estate of McFayden, we examined the checks from the conservatorship estate to the living children. Each check bears the notation gift, annual gift, or gift, no tax. None of the checks contains any notation to the effect that the transfer was intended to be an advancement or ademption. We further note the district court's holding that the gifts made during the conservatorship were completed without notice to the claimants. In this appeal from a probate case, we are being asked to review actions taken in an earlier, separate conservatorship proceeding. In order to prove their claims against the probate estate, the claimants introduced into evidence selected applications and orders from the conservatorship estate regarding the gifts. These documents raise the question of whether the claimants were afforded adequate notice of the gifting. However, that question was not raised before the county judge who would have knowledge of both proceedings, and the estate was unable to respond to this issue in the record. The question was first raised by the district court in its review. Our review is confined by the theory of the case and by the lack of a complete record of the conservatorship proceedings. For the foregoing reasons, we find no plain error in the county court's holding that the transfers from the conservatorship estate to the living children were gifts rather than advancements or ademptions.