Court Opinion

ID: 9675008
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 04:39:02.664017+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:16:30.765601
License: Public Domain

OPINION ON MOTION FOR REHEARING
The Appellant has filed a Motion for Rehearing and NationsBank has filed an ami-cus curiae brief in support of the Appellant’s contentions. It is urged that the Court erred in holding that the Midland account at NCNB, now NationsBank, was not a joint account with right of survivorship. The Appellant contends (1) that initials on the signature card beside the box with the statement “or with right of survivorship” is sufficient for the card to be in the language of the statute, “signed by the party” and (2) that incorporation of the bank’s deposit agreement by reference was sufficient to make the account a survivorship account. We agree. The Motion for Rehearing is granted.

“Signed Agreement”

Texas Probate Code, Section 489(a) provides for the creation of joint accounts with right of survivorship provided there is' a “written agreement signed by the party who dies”. Tex.PROB.Code Ann. § 439(a) (Vernon’s Supp.1993). Do a party’s initials qualify to show the party “signed” the agreement? We conclude the answer is “Yes”. Tex.Bus. & Com.Code Ann. § 1.201(39) (Vernon 1968) says, “ ‘signed’ includes any symbol executed or adopted by a party with present intention to authenticate a writing.” The official comment to Section 1.201(39) notes that authentication “may be by initials”. While we are confident that NationsBank would not accept a check drawn on this account with only the initials of the depositor, the statute as opposed to the bank’s signature card does not require a signature, but only that the written agreement be “signed” and a set of initials meets that requirement.

Incorporation by Reference

NationsBank cites the Court to Tex. Rev.Civ.Stat.Ann. art. 342-701 (Vernon Supp.1993), for the proposition that the deposit contract is a contract in writing by which the parties are bound. We agree that the statute makes the depository agreement a contract in writing. But that is not the issue. The issue is whether there was a written agreement “signed by the party who dies” as required by Section 439(a) of the Texas Probate Code.
*541The Appellant urges that many statutes require that a writing be “signed” by a party but that another agreement incorporated by reference meets the requirements where one agreement is signed and the other is not. They cite Tex.Bus. & Com.Code Ann. § 26.01 (Vernon 1987) (statute of frauds) and Tex. Rev.Cxv.StatAnn. art. 6573a (Vernon Supp. 1993) (Texas Real Estate License Act). They also rely upon the language in Owen v. Hendricks, 433 S.W.2d 164, 166 (Tex.1968), a real estate commission case, where the Court said, “It is uniformly held that an unsigned paper may be incorporated by reference in the paper signed by the person sought to be charged.” See also MTrust Corp. N.A. v. LJH Corp., 837 S.W.2d 250 (Tex.App. — Fort Worth 1992, writ denied), a statute of frauds case.
We recognize that in Stauffer v. Henderson, 801 S.W.2d 858 (Tex.1990), the Court spoke clearly when in discussing the requirements under Section 439 of the Probate Code, it said:
Second, the necessity of a written agreement signed by the decedent to create a right of survivorship in a joint account is emphatic. [Emphasis added].
Id. at 863. See also R. Virden, Joint Tenancy with Right of Survivorship, 51 Tex.B.J. 455 (1988) and R. Virden, Joint Tenancy with Right of Survivorship Accounts, 55 Tex. B.J. 24 (1992).
But in that case, the Court was not considering the issue now before this Court and wrote only on the issue before it. In amending Section 439, the legislature had to be aware of the holdings that one signed agreement can incorporate terms of another unsigned agreement and even that initials may serve to make a document “signed”. We recognize that such a holding provides an exception to the language characterized as “emphatic.” But such exception is warranted based upon the Supreme Court’s holdings in other cases with similar statutory requirements.
We sustain the Appellant’s Points of Error Nos. One and Five of the Motion for Rehearing. The judgment of the trial court is reversed and judgment is rendered that the funds in the Midland and Monahans accounts belong to George Ann McNeme as her separate property under rights of survivorship.