Court Opinion

ID: 9661437
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-23 22:39:11.991113+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:14:28.606835
License: Public Domain

Currie, J.
(dissenting). I respectfully dissent from the opinion of the court.
The 999 shares of capital stock of the Patrick Cudahy Family Company to which Article VI of the will relates constituted part of the assets of an inter vivos trust. Under the provisions of the trust there was no possibility of any of these 999 shares becoming part of the assets of the estate of testatrix Josephine C. Hoyt. As fully explained in our opinion in In re Patrick Cudahy Family Trust, ante, p. 198, 125 N. W. (2d) 344, at the time testatrix died the only right, which testatrix had with respect to such 999 shares, was that of exercising a testamentary power of appointment to appoint the dividends payable on such shares to someone else for life. If she failed to exercise the power of appointment, or, if because of her prior partial release of the power of appointment the attempted exercise of the power was void, the dividends from the 999 shares of stock did not become an asset of the estate. The proceeding in which Helen Bischoff had incurred the expenditure for counsel fees and costs was *219not the instant estate proceeding, but one involving only the inter vivos trust.
My first point of disagreement with the majority opinion is the holding that an absolute duty rested upon the executor to enter an appearance in the trust proceeding and there do battle to compel the trustee to recognize the attempted exercise of the power made in favor of Helen Bischoff by Article VI of the will. The executor was not even a proper party in the trust proceeding. An appointee under a power of appointment does not take from the donee of the power. Except for this, the position of the appellant as executor of Mrs. Hoyt’s will is comparable with the situation that would have obtained if the respondent has been a specific devisee of realty under the will and someone had asserted an adverse title based on an inter vivos transfer. Title to the realty would not have passed to the executor. It would have passed directly to the devisee and the executor would have had no claim to the realty nor to its possession, in the absence of a showing of insufficient personal property to pay debts and administration expenses. MacDonald, The Rights of a Wisconsin Personal Representative in the Real Estate of his Decedent, 1960 Wisconsin Law Review, p. 363. Nor would the executor have been a proper party to any proceeding to enforce the title of the devisee. Marsh v. Board of Supervisors (1875), 38 Wis. 250; McManany v. Sheridan (1892), 81 Wis. 538, 51 N. W. 1011; Volk v. Stowell (1898), 98 Wis. 385, 74 N. W. 118; and see Estate of Rieman (1956), 272 Wis. 378, 75 N. W. (2d) 564.
Secondly, even if the executor were held to be a proper party in the trust proceeding, the executor ought not to have incurred any expenditure for counsel fees and disbursements in that proceeding without first obtaining approval of the county court in the estate proceeding. No creditor or legatee in the estate proceeding has any financial interest in the dividends that are the subject of the exercise of the power *220which arise under the will. If the executor did apply to the county court in the estate proceeding for authority to incur expenses chargeable to the estate, in order to litigate in the trust proceeding the issue of the legal effect of the attempted exercise of the power, the county court should refuse to permit such expenditure where the appointee, here Helen Bischoff, has already engaged counsel to litigate the matter.
Thirdly, where no actual or potential benefit could accrue to the Josephine C. Hoyt estate from the services performed by counsel for Helen Bischoff in the litigation had in the trust proceeding, it should be held that Helen Bischoff’s interest in this litigation was so adverse to that of the creditors and legatees of the estate that she should not have reimbursement from the estate for any expenses incurred for such counsel fees and costs. In Estate of Donges (1899), 103 Wis. 497, 518, 79 N. W. 786, this court stated that “courts should be cautious in allowing for services ostensibly rendered to executors, but in spirit and effect rendered to one of the opposing interests, which should bear its own expenses.” See also Estate of Eannelli (1956), 274 Wis. 193, 203, 80 N. W. (2d) 240, and Estate of Dennett (1929), 200 Wis. 84, 227 N. W. 280. Estate of Sheldon (1946), 249 Wis. 430, 24 N. W. (2d) 875, cited in the majority opinion, is readily distinguishable from the instant case. In the Sheldon Case there was a potential benefit to the estate by engaging counsel in an effort to defeat the claim filed by the executor.
For the foregoing reasons I would reverse the order appealed from.