Court Opinion

ID: 9549682
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 18:23:14.153196+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:20:45.136953
License: Public Domain

HENRIOD, Justice
(dissenting).
■ In dissenting, I suggest that this case adds to the present obfuscation anent joint *396bank accounts, in a situation where a clearly worded written agreement between depositors specifically and clearly states that the survivor shall own the fund, interdicting the bank to carry out its plain terms.
This case is identical with Holt v. Bayles.1 There, we clearly said that: “Where there is a joint agreement executed by the parties which clearly declares the intention to create a joint interest of each in the deposit or credit, the court will sustain such intention thus expressed, especially where the contract is not attacked for fraud, mistake, incapacity, or other infirmity.”
To date that case has been the law. It has bottomed the attorney’s advice to clients for 27 years, that probate proceedings and costs might be saved by placing assets in a joint tenancy. Without being cognizant of the exact history of joint bank accounts, I think that the standard agreement with respect to such accounts, carefully has been designed and fashioned from a cloth woven by the principles of the Holt case. That case has been followed, without exception, in all Utah cases succeeding it, .including Neill v. Royce,2 Greener v. Greener,3 and even First Security Bank of Utah, N. A. v. Demiris,4 sired by the same author who pens this decision. Even though such subsequent cases represented a factually different situation, being inter vivos transactions not involving survivorship, nonetheless, and without question or exception, they affirmed and endorsed Holt v. Bayles. Ironically, the main opinion cites all of those cases in a rather peripatetic effort to justify its position, including a sloughing-off of the doctrine of stare decisis, without explanation. All this with an irrelevant emphasis on the word “intention.”
Holt v. Bayles simply said that if the deceased’s intention was claimed to have been other than that expressed in the deposit agreement, such “intention” must be proven by him who attacks the survivors claim, on some equitable ground pointing to fraud, mistake or the like, and that such equitable ground shall be directed against the survivor’s dereliction in equity, by clear a/nd convincing evidence. This is sound and sensible and but reiterates the hornbook amen to the rule that any contract may be vitiated in equity on the same grounds.
That is not this case. The complaint, partly quoted in the main opinion, simply alleges that the deceased “did not know or realize that by creating these accounts he was placing his savings at the disposal of ‘defendant’ or that he was placing her in a position where she would inherit all of said accounts upon his death.” Nowhere is there any allegation that the defendant practiced any fraud or deception on the deceased or that she was a party to any other equitable *397indiscretion, — an essential ingredient in the application of the Holt v. Bayles decision, and those following it until now.
To urge that the deceased did not realize what he was doing would be to conclude he was illiterate, — which is not contended for in the complaint, — or that he misunderstood the English language,- — which is not provoked in the complaint, — since the deposit contract, in crystal clearness informed everyone that the survivor was the owner in toto of the fund, and that the bank was to carry out its terms.
To consider this agreement differently than we would a promissory note, a bond or a deed, where a transfer apparently is contemplated, where none of the equitable means of destroying such instrument is alleged, simply mocks the parol evidence rule, the decision in Holt v. Bayles, and the universally recognized principles of equity required for its destruction.
I offer a gratuity to that of the main opinion which, without authority, says the bank prepares the form5 and that consequently “its recitals need not necessarily be regarded primarily as an agreement between the parties.” The answer to this ipse dixit is found in a question: Why not? The bank, like Mahomet, did not go to these people. They went to the bank, asked for the very integrated agreement they received, read it, voluntarily and deliberately signed it. If what the main opinion suggests has any merit, it lies in the idea that it is foolhardy to sign anything, and that such foolhardiness paternalistically will find comfort in the courts. Why not do it the easy way ? Why not simply deposit the money in a joint account, skip the parol evidence rule, forget about principles of equity, bury Holt v. Bayles, and let the courts make a postmortem contract for the parties, one of whose lips are stilled? Substitute for his solemn written pledge, the words of a stranger to the inter vivos agreement,— rankest kind of hearsay, purported to have been spoken by the deceased, all in the absence of him who was particeps in the contract’s creation, and against which hearsay a surviving depositor almost is helpless to challenge.
Perhaps a more serious departure indulged by the main opinion, is that under the facts of this case, it wipes out Holt v. Bayles, the cases succeeding it, including First Security Bank of Utah, N. A. v. Demiris, and a solid principle of equity. Heretofore in survivorship cases a conclusive presumption prevailed, destructible only by clear and convincing evidence of a true equitable ground for relief, such as fraud, directed against the survivor, not in favor of the deceased’s intention. The succeeding cases, having to do with inter vivos combatants, required no such quality of proof, although a presumption of validity *398was provided as one of the shields in the armory of whichever joint depositor was attacked. Even the Demiris case recognized this.
NOW: In the instant case the agreement is ignored and no longer is it necessary to circumvent its terms on equitable grounds by clear and convincing evidence. It simply requires that we look, not to the contract in the light of facts that equity may consider necessary for relief, but only to the intention of one of the parties, now deceased, without any allegation or proof of tortious conduct whatever on the part of the survivor. All that is necessary under this decision is clear and convincing evidence of the intention of one party to a contract, now deceased, without any showing of any dereliction of his co-contractor offensive to equity. Heretofore the true test has been to determine by clear and convincing evidence whether the survivor has been guilty of equitable conduct inimical to the sustenance of the contract, establishable only by clear and convincing evidence. This case has upsidedowned the law on joint accounts. Most certainly it will require banks and depositors to change their ways, — to what, extent it is difficult to anticipate. This case will bring more than one client into the advocate’s office to inquire: Why did you tell me that our joint account would eliminate the necessity of making a will, and would save me the costs of probate, absent proof by clear and convincing evidence that I was a malefactor in the creation of the account ? Why didn’t you tell me that without any inequitable conduct on my part, my wife’s intention, unexpressed in our contract, was the only thing that my in-laws would have to urge to deprive me of the specific agreement we entered into with studied judgment, when you know I can’t prove that my wife didn’t say anything to them that pointed up else but that our own personal and confidential deliberations and contract would be irrevocable? Finally: What about the advice you gave me that there was a case called Holt v. Bayles that would protect our interests ?
The dictum of the main opinion to the effect that “where there is a written agreement of joint tenancy with right of sur-vivorship, there is a presumption of validity unless * * * it is shown by clear and convincing evidence that the parties intended otherwise,” is not borne out by the cases cited. Irrespective of such misapplication of those cases, the dictum lacks the adjunct of requiring equitable grounds that are necessary to destroy the contract.
That dictum does not fit this case. Here we have an allegation that one of the parties intended something other than was expressed in writing. There is nothing in this case that even mentions the intentions of the parties. There is no hint as to the intention, good or bad, known or unknown, of the other party to the agreement.
*399I am confident this case will not be cited as an authority for the irrelevant dictum quoted above, but will be urged as an authority that if one party to such a contract had an intention irrespective of and different than that expressed in the contract, and from that of the other’s, — the case here,— the integrated contract may be emasculated by proof of the former’s without resort to allegation or proof of the latter’s. It will be cited also as an authority sanctioning an unqualified exception to the parol evidence rule in this type of case, if one, but not the other of joint contractors, does not intend the consequences of his adopted, signed agreement.
I hope it has been a correct understanding on the part of this writer that once two people sit down, read their contemplated written contract and ink it, — that is it, absent facts that might vitiate it because of the inequitable conduct of one of the signatories, and that whether one or the other or both had differing intentions secreted in the recesses of the mind, their chameleonic undisclosed intentions, under the law and in equity, would not change the color or the fabric of their deliberate and heretofore irrevocable acts.
This case nurtures the obfuscation mentioned, and the trial court should be sustained, with (emphasis added).
CALLISTER, J., concurs in the views .. expressed in the opinion of HENRIOD, J.

. 85 Utah 364 (1934), 39 P.2d 715.

. 101 Utah 181, 120 P.2d 327 (1941).

. 116 Utah 571 (1949), 212 P.2d 194.

. 10 Utah 2d 405 (1960), 354 P.2d 97.

. I think Holt v. Bayles prepared the form not only for the bank but for its depositors.