Court Opinion

ID: 9774048
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 18:07:29.607593+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:32:01.180785
License: Public Domain

ON MOTION FOR REHEARING
In a forceful motion for rehearing, appel-lee challenges the correctness of this court’s opinion on original submission. Counsel for both sides have provided this court with an exceptionally well prepared case, both in the trial court and this court. Needless to say, appellee asserts with as much vigor that the Boren rule controls the disposition of this case as does appellant that it does not.
These additional words are written on motion for rehearing because appellee takes this court to task for refusing to follow the case of Jones v. Jones, 630 S.W.2d 645 (Tex.Civ.App.—Dallas 1980, writ ref’d No. B9638), and in so doing misconstrues our holding. While a copy of the Jones opinion was appended to appellees’ brief on original submission and the brief, in citing the case, stated writ of error was refused, we could not find where the case was published. Ap-pellee has now appended to the motion for rehearing a certified copy of the order of the Supreme Court refusing the writ of error, and while still unpublished, we will consider the case.
In Jones, it appears the parties offered as “witnesses” to the will signed twice, once in the second line of the self-proving affidavit and once at the end of same. The Dallas Court held that Boren controlled. That court, not having before it a statement of facts, looked to the trial court’s findings of fact and noted the court apparently was satisfied that “the testator and ‘witnesses’ innocently completed the typed instrument and filled all the blanks therein in the belief that they had accomplished the making of a lawful will.” We are unable to discern, as was the Dallas Court, what evidence the trial court had before it in Jones. We know, however, what the court had before it in this case. Appellant did not seek probate of the will as a self-proved will under Tex.Prob.Code Ann. § 84(a). Rather she sought probate of the will as an “attested written will” under Tex.Prob.Code Ann. § 84(b) and provided the sworn testimony of the attorney who prepared the will and an assistant cashier of the bank where the will was executed, both of whom swore they signed as witnesses to the execution of the will at the request of the testatrix and in her presence.
We think this fact distinguishes our decision from the other eases cited by appel-lees, including Jones. We do not believe the legislature, in enacting Tex.Prob.Code Ann. § 59, intended that statute to deny a testatrix her right to dispose of her property through a technicality; rather, as we see it, the purpose of the self-proving affidavit is to provide an alternative way of proving the will. Appellants have not used the self-proving affidavit in such proof. They have provided the witnesses.
The motion for rehearing is overruled.