Court Opinion

ID: 9784283
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-30 20:41:28.599702+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:35:52.126883
License: Public Domain

BAILEY C. MOSELEY, Justice,
dissenting.
I must disagree that a person can simultaneously serve both the role of a co-testator in a joint will and as a witness to that same will.
The majority relies on the rationale employed in In re Estate of Teal, 135 S.W.3d 87 (Tex.App.-Corpus Christi 2002, no pet.), as the primary basis for determining that the co-testatrix here could qualify as a witness to her husband’s will. Although the majority ably and accurately sets out the facts in Teal, some are repeated here. Teal, the testator, had drafted his own two-page will and had requested Anzaldua to act as the notary. On the back of the second page were two signatures, with the word “witness” hand-printed beneath each; *5one of the signatures was illegible and the other purported to be a “Jane Martinez.” Anzaldua testified that she had questioned Teal about the content of the will and partially discussed its consequences and that she had first determined that he was signing the will of his own free will; she then saw Teal and the two witnesses sign and then she, herself, signed the will and affixed her notary seal. Anzaldua specifically maintained that she had intended to sign the will solely “to witness to the signature on the will,” not as “a subscribing witness” to the will. After Teal died, neither of the two persons shown on the will as witnesses could be located. Needless to say, the will contained no self-proving clause. The Corpus Christi court ruled that, despite her protestations about her role in the will signing process, Anzaldua
[sjigned the will in the presence of the testator. Because there is no requirement that a will be notarized, Anzaldua’s signature served no purpose other than as a witness. Her actions, in questioning the testator about his intentions and the contents of the will are more consistent with the actions of a witness, than with the actions of a notary public.
Teal, 135 S.W.3d at 91-92.
In Teal, if you remove Anzaldua’s role as notary and do not consider her a witness, her presence and her signature served no purpose. In our circumstance, however, Dena’s presence and her signature had a center role in these proceedings; she was acting as a co-testatrix of the joint will of her husband. There is no evidence that she assumed the role of a witness to anything or that her husband, the decedent, considered her as playing that part; she was a participant to the act and not a witness to it. Her presence was not surplus; it would have been required if she were to be bound to the terms of the will herself. Her presence and her signature served a purpose: co-testatrix.
Suppose that the joint will had been typewritten and not in Dena’s handwriting (thereby making it a non-holographic will on her part). Suppose, further, that both of the joint testators had died simultaneously. Given that circumstance, would we now determine that when the joint will is presented in each of their separate probate actions that each could have served as a witness for the other? Unless that answer could be in the affirmative, we must determine that Dena could not simultaneously be both a co-maker of the will and the witness to the will of her co-maker.
I would find that because Dena’s role as a co-maker of the joint will disqualified her from also being a witness to her co-maker’s signature, the will fails.