Court Opinion

ID: 9768966
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 14:00:08.733264+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:30:51.410891
License: Public Domain

OPINION ON REHEARING
We re-affirm our judgment and original opinion. We write further only because appellees’ rehearing motion asserts con-*601turning error on our part for failure to recognize that Tommie Jackson made an “election” to probate Uleta’s will, thereby binding himself to its provisions. Appellants have filed a response requesting that we write on this question. To accommodate all parties we add the following to our original opinion.
In Graser v. Graser, 147 Tex. 404, 215 S.W.2d 867, 870 (1948) the Supreme Court stated:
Nor do we think the case is or could be seriously urged as one within the familiar rule of equity prevailing in this state, that where a testator disposes by will of property not his own, and the will also provides benefits for the real owner which the latter would not otherwise enjoy, such owner may by express or implied election to take under the will, cause his own property in question to be treated as if it had passed by the will. A fundamental prerequisite for the application of this rule is that the will shall purport to dispose of the property which the testator does not own. If it does not do so, there is plainly no basis for an election, and a beneficiary under the will may accordingly take whatever the will affords without any equities arising against his own properly. It is also [a] prerequisite that as to the testator’s intent to dispose of property he does not own, the will shall “be open to no other construction”, because “The law presumes that no man will attempt a testamentary disposition of the properly of others.” [Citation omitted.]
Id. See also Ellexson v. Ellexson, 467 S.W.2d 515, 520-21 (Tex.Civ.App.—Amarillo 1971, no writ), and City of Corpus Christi v. Coleman, 262 S.W.2d 790, 795 (Tex.Civ.App.—San Antonio 1953, no writ) to the same effect. Based on these authorities we hold that Tommie Jackson did not make such an election as to stop him from executing a subsequent will revoking his 1958 document.