Court Opinion

ID: 9679725
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 07:03:55.004886+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:17:18.950666
License: Public Domain

LAMBERT, Justice,
dissenting.
The scholarly opinion of the majority has addressed a number of questions which are unnecessary to the decision in this case, but failed largely to address the question *388which is central to the case. Simply stated, the question is whether the failure of a party attacking the validity of a will to name all beneficiaries of the will as parties to the litigation is fatal to the action.
Since at least 1911, the courts of this Commonwealth have consistently answered the foregoing question in the affirmative (Scott v. Roy, 144 Ky. 99, 137 S.W. 858 (1911); Security Trust Co. v. Swope, 274 Ky. 99, 118 S.W.2d 200 (1938); McComas v. Hull, 274 Ky. 192, 118 S.W.2d 540 (1938); Russell v. Grumbley’s Executor, 290 Ky. 57, 160 S.W.2d 321 (1942)) and despite its manifest scholarship, the majority opinion contains not one citation of Kentucky authority to the contrary. Moreover, the three most widely used treatises on Kentucky probate law confidently confirm the rule that all beneficiaries under the will must be parties. In R. Noe, KENTUCKY PROBATE METHODS § 1.34 (1976), the proposition is stated as follows:
“All necessary parties must be made parties to the action by the appellant and served with process or by warning order.
‘Necessary’ parties are those parties in whose favor the probate court adjudged. Thus, when the will had been admitted to probate in the county court, all beneficiaries under the will are necessary parties. Also, all persons who would have been interested in the testator’s estate had there been no will must be made parties in order to avoid vexatious litigation in regard to the will.”
Similarly, 2 J. Merritt, KENTUCKY PRACTICE, PROBATE PRACTICE AND PROCEDURE § 1258 (2d ed. 1984), states:
“When a will contest is brought by filing an original action in the circuit court, the statute provides that ‘all necessary parties’ shall be brought before the court by the plaintiff. There have been no decisions under this statute on this point since it was amended to reflect the new court structure, but the language about necessary parties is the same and should be interpreted the same way.
‘Necessary parties’ are those who benefit from the probate judgment and would be interested in having it sustained; necessary parties do not include those against whose interest the judgment was rendered and who would be interested in vacating the judgment.
If the appeal is from an order admitting a will to probate, it is certain that all the devisees and legatees are necessary parties and must be brought before the court regardless of the interest of any of the individuals of that group. An executor who has qualified is a necessary party defendant.”
Finally, Schmitt, KENTUCKY PROBATE § 10.1 (1980), bluntly declares:
“Such an action may be brought by any heir who is aggrieved by the probate of the will. Beneficiaries under the will and all other necessary parties should be brought before the court.”
The majority opinion has rewritten settled law with respect to who must be named as defendants in will contest litigation. The majority has now determined that a party attacking the validity of a will may pick and choose among beneficiaries, omitting from the litigation those who may be sympathetic and concentrating entirely upon those who appear to be otherwise.
The validity of a will should be determined by its totality. One provision of a will may not be declared invalid while another is upheld. It is the will and the circumstances which attended its execution which should be the focus of the litigation, not what parties are included and excluded. By the procedure authorized by the majority, however, the focus will be diverted. By omitting certain parties, the contestant can, in effect, permit the jury to rewrite the will invalidating those bequests which it deems inappropriate, safe in the knowledge that proper bequests have been or will be satisfied.
This is a classic example of the oft-repeated phrase that hard cases make bad law. Clearly, respondent, Irene Goldstein, is an unsympathetic party as she appears and was found by the jury to have exercised undue influence upon the decedent. Despite this, we should not abandon settled rules of law merely to correct what we perceive to be an improper result by the *389Court of Appeals. That Court applied settled law to the facts presented and achieved a correct, albeit unpleasant, result. By our reversal of the Court of Appeals, what has heretofore been clear is now rendered uncertain and a path has been paved for manipulative, vexatious and multiplicitous will contest lawsuits.
REYNOLDS and WINTERSHEIMER, JJ., join in this dissenting opinion.