Court Opinion

ID: 9637608
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 15:12:23.654451+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:09:57.923474
License: Public Domain

MANDERINO, Justice
(dissenting).
I dissent. The trust in this case was a revocable trust. Except perhaps for sums necessary to fulfill the settlement agreement entered into with his first wife, the settlor, therefore, could have revoked the entire trust. If a trust can thus be revoked, it follows that the settlor can revoke his own declaration as to the manner in which the trust instrument may be altered or amended. The August 17, 1969 instrument, therefore, validly amended the trust agreement to the extent that the rights of the settlor’s first wife were not disturbed.
Moreover, the majority states that “evidence [of the settlor’s] intention to effectuate the proposed amendment cannot be introduced to explain or supersede the unambiguous requirements of the trust agreement.” The majority, however, looks to extrinsic evidence to determine whether the August 17, 1969 signed instrument was valid. If we may not look to extrinsic evidence which would have established that, by signing the August 17, 1969, instrument, the settlor meant to do exactly what he did, how does the majority consider extrinsic evidence to establish that he did not mean for the signed instrument of August 17, 1969, to be effective. The majority uses extrinsic facts to show the possibility that the settlor wasn’t serious when he signed the August 17, 1969 instrument, but paradoxically states that the appellant was properly precluded from introducing extrinsic evidence to establish that the settlor was serious. The law cannot go in two different directions on the same issue at the same time.
*31If all extrinsic evidence is excluded, we are left with a signed instrument amending the trust instrument through incorporation by reference of another document. There is no rule of law that states that an amendment so accomplished is invalid.
The issue of the trustees’ “acceptance” might be relevant if the issue before us involved some breach of fiduciary duty by the trustee. There is no such issue. In any event, as previously noted, since the trust was revocable, the settlor had every right to partially revoke the clause concerning the method by which the trust instrument could be altered or amended.