Opinion ID: 891577
Heading Depth: 5
Heading Rank: 5

Heading: Secrecy

Text: {42} The district court found that Viola Varela was secretive. She did not keep Gregoria C de Baca or her brothers and sisters informed of some actions taken concerning the properties and assets of Gregoria C de Baca. The Court of Appeals again disagreed, holding that there was insufficient evidence to support this finding because other family members had already discovered the deeds after Viola's son angrily boasted of owning all of Gregoria's property. Chapman, 2008-NMCA-108, ¶ 44, 144 N.M. 709, 191 P.3d 567. They were therefore able to confront Gregoria about the property transfer, unlike the contestant in Doughty, who only found out about her mother's inter vivos transfers when it was too late to ask her about them. Id. For this reason, the Court of Appeals concluded that the evidence of secrecy did not help this Court determine whether the transfer was not the mother's intention. Id. Our analysis differs. {43} It is undisputed that despite ample opportunities, Viola did not tell her siblings or Gregoria's other potential heirs, other than her own children, about the will. This seems to be sufficient evidence of secrecy to us, but because the Court of Appeals addressed the deeds, so will we. Siblings discovered the deeds through Viola's son's inadvertence and did not discover the will until after Gregoria's death. It is true that because of the nature of many undue influence cases, secrecy often prevents the contestant of the will or other conveyance from determining whether the testator or grantor had been unduly influenced by directly asking him or her. See, e.g., Doughty, 117 N.M. at 287, 290, 871 P.2d at 383, 386. However, this eventuality seems to be due to cases involving the dead rather than an underlying policy behind the inquiry into secrecy. Simply because Gregoria's children were able to ask her about the deeds does not indicate to us that Viola's secrecy was any less suspicious, especially with regard to the will. Indeed, when Siblings asked Gregoria about the deeds, Gregoria claimed that she had not executed them. While this gave Siblings the opportunity to attempt to undo some of Viola's alleged undue influence, their failure to do so during Gregoria's lifetimepossibly due to improper intervention by Viola into their efforts to find an attorney for Gregoriadoes not negate the suspicious character of Viola's secrecy. Moreover, if Siblings had succeeded in their first effort to revoke the deeds, they never could have confronted Gregoria with the provisions of the will that are directly in question in this case; Siblings did not discover the will until after Gregoria died. This seems to us to be a perfect example of the sort of conduct a fact finder might properly take into account in deciding whether suspicions were raised that a will proponent was attempting to prevent others from discovering his or her undue influence.