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Notes -
Court opinion:
In year 1992, Dorothy dies at age 85. She has no descendants, so her only potential heirs are her two brothers, Yale and Zangwill. The probate judge appoints Zangwill's son John as administrator. Harold, a friend of the family for the past thirty years, submits a family tree to the probate judge and testifies to his personal knowledge that Yale, having been born eleven years before Dorothy, died six years ago at age 90, so Zangwill is Dorothy's only heir. Zangwill renounces his interest in Dorothy's estate in favor of John, so John gets the entire estate. The largest portion of the estate is a piece of real property in New York City, worth 280 k$.
John renovates the property. By year 2018, its value has skyrocketed to 2.3 M$, and he decides to sell it. Whoops! A title search reveals that Yale actually died, not six years before Dorothy at age 90, but one year after Dorothy at the unlikely age of 97. This means that Yale should have gotten half of the estate back in 1992. John sues Yale's ultimate heir—a trust set up by Yale's now-dead brother-in-law, presumably for the benefit of the brother-in-law's children—to confirm that John has obtained full ownership of the building through the doctrine of adverse possession. The trust counterclaims, alleging that in 1992 (1) Harold committed fraud by giving false testimony and (2) John breached his fiduciary duty as administrator by failing to conduct a diligent search for heirs (compare the hiring of a professional genealogist in this other case), so adverse possession does not apply.
The trial judge rules in John's favor, and the appeals panel and the supreme court affirm.* There is no evidence that Harold did anything but make an honest mistake. And Harold was a disinterested witness who provided both sworn testimony and a family tree, as required by state law, so it was not unreasonable for John to rely on Harold's mistaken facts. John has been in possession of the building for more than twenty years, so he easily meets the ten-year requirement of adverse possession under state law.
One justice on the supreme court dissents. He thinks that Harold's unresearched testimony and family tree do not count as the "diligent search" for heirs that the law requires of an estate administrator (and for which the law permits three years of time), and therefore John's reliance on those mistaken facts counts as a breach of fiduciary duy. But the other six justices disagree with this view.
*New York's courts confusingly are named (from lowest to highest) "supreme, appeals, appeals", rather than the "trial, appeals, supreme" pattern that is more familiar. I have translated the New York terminology to regular terminology.
One thing I've noticed in my years of practicing law is that probate courts are, in general, more favorable to questionable claims that involve people who are actively involved in the family and not distant relatives. While the legal reasoning may be impeccable, the justices probably secretly considered the fact that Yale and Dorothy weren't exactly close if he didn't even know that his sister died, and that his brother didn't even know if he was still alive. Then take it back one more level and have a trust for the benefit of the brother-in-law's heirs trying to put a claim on a piece of property 25 years after the estate settled. And on the other hand you have a nephew who was close enough to act as the executor of his aunt's estate. No judge is going to undo a done deal for the benefit of some strangers unless there's compelling evidence that the law requires it, like some sort of evidence that the nephew was intentionally keeping his uncle in the dark about Dorothy's death so he could inherit the property. BTW, the actual terminology is Supreme Court, Supreme Court—Appellate Division, and Court of Appeals. New York is just more egalitarian in that they believe all their courts are important enough to have the Supreme Court label.
... Well at least one would as it seems in this case
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This is an interesting one. 26 years is a long time to pass to have someone come out of the blue and try to make a claim on your inheritance. In my opinion, it would be fair for Yale's estate to get a small piece of sale price, but half would be far too much. Something in the realm of 10% seems more fair to me. 0% also seems fair to me, but I wouldn't quibble if he was awarded 10%.
If Yale's estate was entitled to compensation, I'd have gone with the 1992 value of his portion of Dorothy's estate, adjusted for inflation.
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