Court Opinion

ID: 7918376
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2022-09-08 22:15:43.725539+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T16:32:54.862307
License: Public Domain

Jackson, J.
(dissenting): Under the unusual rule of this court followed by no other court in the country, it fell to me to write the foregoing opinion with which I disagree. I feel that the court had no jurisdiction to make a different will for the testatrix simply because she had the intent to die testate. I would have held that the will was valid as to the bequest of the bank stock to Marjorie McCullough Staggs and that the balance of the trust would go by intestate succession to Miriam F. Ball, the sole heir at law of the testatrix.
In the case of Hoover v. Roberts, 144 Kan. 58, 58 P. 2d 83, the syllabus reads as follows:
“1. The excision of the word “intestate” from a will and the substitution of the phrase “without issue” consitute neither interpretation nor construction of the terms of the will, but reformation, over which latter subject matter a district court has no jurisdiction.
“2. A judgment, void for want of jurisdiction, may be collaterally attacked at any time.”
*507The only question I have in the case is whether Miriam F. Ball should retain the life estate. The trust was to continue until the youngest child of Miriam F. Ball reached the age of twenty-three years or until Miriam’s death whichever event occurs the later; and if the life estate is preserved then the trust would be enforced and since Miriam F. Ball will probably live much longer than until her daughters have reached twenty-three years of age, the result would be that the will would be carried out in its entirety. And yet we hold the will to be invalid.
I would say that Mrs. Ball should inherit the whole estate at the present time as the sole heir of her mother and the will is void except as to the bank stock mentioned above.