Court Opinion

ID: 9624321
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 06:58:14.682578+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:05:43.406140
License: Public Domain

ELMORE, Judge,
concurring in part and dissenting in part.
For the reasons stated below, I respectfully dissent from that part of the majority opinion holding that the trial court properly denied defendant’s motion to join Elizabeth High as a necessary party.
Defendant moved to join Elizabeth High as a defendant pursuant to Rule 25(d) because plaintiff had conveyed her right, title, and interest in the property to Elizabeth High by quitclaim deeds. The trial court denied defendant’s joinder motion in its 31 August 2007 order. This decree is supported by the following challenged findings of fact:
15. The Defendant herein, Ms. Edmunds, contends through counsel that she still maintains an ownership interest in the subject property by and through the residuary clause of the Will of William Seymour Edmunds, such interest being a one-half (M) undivided interest along with Donald P Edmunds, the son of the testator, which this Court finds to be without merit.
26. It is the position of this Court that at the time that Phyllis Edmunds signed quitclaim deeds to Elizabeth High, Ms. Edmunds *437had no interest or rights in the subject property and it follows that she could have conveyed no interest or rights to Elizabeth or Alan High.
28. At the time the . . . Motion to Join Assignee as Defendant (Elizabeth High) [was filed], Ms. High owned no interest in the subject matter of this proceeding sufficient to grant standing to seek relief from the Default Judgment dated November 7, 2000.
Defendant argues that “at the time of the default judgment, [she] owned a one-half 04) undivided interest as a tenant in common and continued to own that interest until [she] deeded it to Elizabeth High.”
I would agree with defendant that the trial court misinterpreted the will and pre-marital agreement. The trial court read the will as granting to defendant a life estate in the property and granting to plaintiff the entire remainder. I do not believe that this reading is consistent with the plain language of the will.
“The intent of the testator is the polar star that must guide the courts in the interpretation of a will.” Coppedge v. Coppedge, 234 N.C. 173, 174, 66 S.E.2d 777, 778 (1951) (citations omitted). “The court looks at every provision of the will, weighing each statement, and gathering the testator’s intent from the four comers of the instrument.” Hammer v. Hammer, 179 N.C. App. 408, 410, 633 S.E.2d 878, 881 (2006) (citing Holland v. Smith, 224 N.C. 255, 257, 29 S.E.2d 888, 889-90 (1944)). In this case, we look to Items Eight and Nine of the will and paragraphs twenty-three and thirty-seven of the pre-marital agreement to determine the testator’s intent as to the property’s disposition.
William Edmunds’s will, executed fewer than four months before his death, clearly devised to defendant a life estate in the property “subject to the terms and conditions set forth in the Pre-Marital Agreement....” Those terms, located in paragraph thirty-seven of the pre-marital agreement, entitled defendant “to hold, use, and benefit” from the property so long as she met five conditions. If defendant should fail to perform any of those conditions, “the remainder interest in the aforementioned real property shall pass to [plaintiff] ... or as directed by the Husband’s will.” When Edmunds drafted the premarital agreement, he left open the possibility that someone other than plaintiff could receive the remainder interest in the property through his will by including those last seven words. Paragraph 23 of *438the pre-marital agreement specifies that Edmunds had the “right to dispose of any or all of [his] Separate Property by deed, will, or otherwise on [his] sole signature . . . .” (Emphasis added.) Edmunds was free to specify a different recipient of the remainder interest in the property in his will; I believe that Item Eight of the will so specifies.
Item Eight of the will only gives defendant a life estate; like the pre-marital agreement, it does not dispose of the remainder. It incorporates paragraph 37 of the pre-marital agreement, but as stated above, paragraph 37 leaves open the possibility that Edmunds could dispose of the remainder differently in his will. The will’s residuary clause, Item Nine, states that “all of the rest, residue, and remainder of [Edmunds’s] estate be divided equally between” defendant and plaintiff. Edmunds divided the property into two separate interests— the life estate and the remainder — but specifically bequeathed only the life estate; the remainder passed into his residuary and, under Item Nine, should have been divided equally between plaintiff and defendant.
Plaintiff argues that such a division is nonsensical; his father could not have intended to give a one-half remainder interest in the property to defendant after she failed to maintain her life estate. Several reasons belie this argument: First, the will’s plain language supports sweeps the remainder into the residuary clause. Second, the pre-marital agreement provided that defendant would lose her life estate if she failed to meet Edmunds’s conditions or upon her death, meaning that the life estate’s expiration was not solely dependent upon her lack of care. Third, defendant had exclusive use of the property while she held her life estate, but would become tenants in common with plaintiff after her life estate expired; such an arrangement would be appropriate if defendant chose to use the lake house only as a vacation home because plaintiff also would have access to the property as a vacation home. And, finally, our Supreme Court has previously recognized a similar bequest. In Lee v. Lee, our Supreme Court interpreted a will that devised a life estate to the testators’ cousin. 216 N.C. 349, 349, 4 S.E.2d 880, 881 (1939). The will’s residuary clause provided that all of the estate’s residue would also pass to the testators’ cousin. Id. at 350, 4 S.E.2d at 881. The Court held that the will perfected title in the cousin because “he took only a life estate by Item 2, [and] the remainder passed to him by the inclusive terms of the residuary clause in Item 9.” Id. In Lee, the will’s simultaneous separation of the life estate interest from the remainder interest and bequest of the separate interests to the same person did not render the residuary *439clause void. Instead, the Court deemed the remainder interest to pass through the residuary clause to the designated recipient, the testators’ cousin. Because he also owned the life estate, his interests united. Here, as in Lee, defendant received a life estate as well as a remainder interest. Unlike the cousin in Lee, however, defendant shared her remainder interest with plaintiff, and, thus, her life estate and remainder interest did not become united into a fee simple. Nevertheless, contrary to the trial court’s findings of fact, defendant acquired a one-half remainder interest in the property under Edmunds’s will.
The trial court’s findings that defendant had no interest to transfer to Elizabeth High are, therefore, also unfounded. The default judgment could not strip defendant of her remainder interest, and, thus, she still had an interest to convey to Elizabeth High. See Karner v. Roy White Flowers, Inc., 351 N.C. 433, 440, 527 S.E.2d 40, 44 (2000) (holding that with respect to default judgments, “[a]n adjudication that extinguishes property rights without giving the property owner an opportunity to be heard cannot yield a ‘valid judgment’ ”). Accordingly, if the trial court were to grant defendant’s motion for relief from the default judgment, Elizabeth High would become tenants in common with Kyle Cox. She is a necessary party who should have been joined as a defendant. Accordingly, I would hold that the trial court erred by denying defendant’s motion to so join her.