Estate of Ringgold
Filed 5/21/13 Estate of Ringgold CA2/7
California Rules of Court, rule 8.1115(a), prohibits courts
and parties from citing or relying on opinions not certified for publication or
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publication or ordered published for purposes of rule 8.1115
IN
THE COURT OF APPEAL OF THE STATE OF CALIFORNIA
SECOND
APPELLATE DISTRICT
DIVISION
SEVEN
Estate of EUGENIA RINGGOLD,
Deceased.
B235032
(Los Angeles
County
DORIAN CARTER,
Petitioner and Appellant,
v.
THOMAS McCULLOUGH, Jr., as Administrator, et al.,
Respondents.
Super. Ct.
No. SP008233)
APPEAL from orders of the Superior Court of
County. Joseph Biderman
and Craig Karlan, Judges. Dismissed.
Law Offices of Amy P. Lee and Amy P.
Lee for Petitioner and Appellant.
Douglas S. Fabian for Respondent
Thomas McCullough, Jr.
Nina R. Ringgold for Respondent
Nathalee Evans.
_______________________
Dorian Carter,
daughter of decedent Eugenia Ringgold, appeals the denial of her ex parte
application to vacate a series of orders made in the probate case involving
Ringgold’s will. We dismiss the appeal
because Carter, as a disinherited child, lacks standing to appeal issues
relating to the administration of the estate.
FACTUAL
AND PROCEDURAL BACKGROUND
The dispute over Eugenia Ringgold’s estate has been
before this court many times. Ringgold
created a will and trust before her 2006 death.
Tracy Sheen, who had been designated as trustee in an interlineation to
the trust document, petitioned to be confirmed as trustee. Ringgold’s friend Nathalee Evans challenged
the petition and sought to be appointed trustee herself. Ultimately, Sheen was confirmed as trustee,
and this Court affirmed Sheen’s confirmation. (Evans
v. Sheen (Mar. 2, 2010, B196909, B201949,
B202637, B209064) [nonpub. opn.].) Evans
then petitioned for Ringgold’s will to be admitted to probate and to be named
executor. (Evans v. McCullough (Nov. 14, 2012, B232397) [nonpub. opn.], at p.
2.) The probate court declined to name
Evans as the executor and appointed Thomas McCullough, Jr. as special
administrator. (Id. at pp. 2-3.) Evans
appealed, and we affirmed the court’s orders.
(Id. at p. 1.)
Now Dorian Carter, Ringgold’s daughter, has joined the
dispute. Carter was disinherited by
Ringgold’s estate plan and has not filed a will contest. On June 9, 2011, she filed an ex parte
application seeking to vacate orders appointing McCullough as the special
administrator, administrator with will annexed, or in any other capacity; to
vacate the court’s orders of January 21, 2011, February 25, 2011, April 8,
2011, and May 20, 2011;
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to cause Ringgold’s records be handed over to Carter; and to secure an order to
show cause concerning sanctions against McCullough. The trial court denied the ex parte
application without a hearing on June 9, 2011, although the court did on that
date order McCullough to post a bond or obtain a waiver of the bond
requirement. Carter appeals the denial
of her ex parte application. Carter also
appeals what she describes in her notice of appeal as the order of July 15,
2011, but two orders were issued that day:
an order concerning the bond requirement and an order appointing
McCullough special administrator of Ringgold’s estate.
DISCUSSION
Carter purports to challenge on appeal the orders appointing
McCullough as special administrator; the failure to award Carter or Evans
possession of Ringgold’s files; and the refusal to order sanctions against
McCullough or set an order to show cause.
Carter has neither demonstrated that these rulings are appealable (see
Prob. Code, § 1303, subd. (a)) nor that our prior opinion (
B232397) [nonpub. opn.]) has not settled many of the issues of which she
complains. Assuming, however, that the
orders are properly appealable, Carter, as a disinherited daughter, has no
standing to appeal them. The probate
court has determined, consistently with the text of Ringgold’s will, that the
will is a pour-over will conveying the assets of her estate to her trust. Ringgold’s trust document expressly excludes
Carter as a beneficiary and specifies that she is not to receive any of
Ringgold’s tangible personal property or her money. Carter’s counsel has not challenged the
validity of the will, and she has acknowledged that Carter is specifically
disinherited under the trust.
Accordingly, Carter, as a surviving but disinherited daughter, has no
interest in her mother’s estate, and cannot demonstrate that she has been
aggrieved by any of the claimed errors in the handling of an estate to which
she is not an heir. As she has not
suffered any legal injury, she lacks authority to raise these claims on
appeal. (Code Civ. Proc., § 902;
Cal.3d 730, 736-737 [to have standing to appeal, a person must be aggrieved in
the sense that his or her rights or interests are injuriously affected];
37-38 [disinherited husband is a stranger to estate and has no right to appeal
orders made in probate proceedings].)
Carter contends that she has standing because she is
an heir under Probate Code section 48 and would be the sole intestate heir, and
she claims that there has been no adjudication of her position regarding her
mother’s estate plan. Therefore, she
appears to be arguing that, like the son in Estate
of Bartsch (2011) 193 Cal.App.4th 885, 890-891, because her position with
respect to the estate has not yet been conclusively adjudicated she has
standing to litigate her view of the estate plan. This argument is not persuasive, however,
because Carter has not articulated any colorable theory under which she could
stand to inherit from Ringgold’s estate.
disinherited child, nonetheless has an interest in her mother’s estate relies
on a convoluted series of assertions in which she attempts to sidestep
Ringgold’s much-litigated trust with another challenge to its nature and
viability, here couched in terms of the qualification of this trust under the
will: Carter claims that because
Ringgold’s trust document was determined to be a declaration of trust, her
trust is not a living trust, so no trust exists to receive assets that were
bequeathed to the Ringgold living trust by Ringgold’s will. Instead, she claims, the savings clause of
the will creates a new trust, and this new trust has a trustee other than the
confirmed trustee of Ringgold’s existing trust.
That trustee is authorized to make distributions at his or her
discretion “to or for the benefit of any one or more (or none)†of Ringgold’s grand-nieces,
grand-nephews, or grandchildren, and Carter claims that the “or none†phrase
silently authorizes the trustee to provide for Carter’s needs out of trust
funds.
Carter’s interpretation of the will is utterly
inconsistent with the plain language used by the testator. Ringgold’s will unequivocally expressed her
intent to direct her assets to her trust, not to create a separate trust; and
regardless of the litigation over the categorization of Ringgold’s trust, the
trust unquestionably exists, so no resort to the savings clause is
necessary. Even if the will could be
understood to create a new trust, no trustee could provide for Carter as she
contends, for the trust document expressly prohibits the trustee from
distributing any of the corpus of Ringgold’s estate to Carter. As Carter has not presented any legally
cognizable theory under which she could have an interest in her mother’s estate
beyond the intestate succession she concedes will not occur, she, unlike the
potential heir in Bartsch,
demonstrated that she has standing to contest the various orders made with
respect to the administration of the Ringgold estate.
Respondent Evans contends that as executor of
Ringgold’s will she owns Ringgold’s files and records. The probate court, however, denied Evans’s
petition to be named executor of Ringgold’s will, and we affirmed that
ruling. (Evans v. McCullough (Nov. 14, 2012, B232397) [nonpub. opn.].) As we have previously held, Evans, as neither
an heir nor the executor, is a stranger to the Ringgold estate and has no
interest in the estate or its administration (id. at pp. 7-8); she therefore has no basis for a claim of
ownership of Ringgold’s files.
DISPOSITION
The appeal is dismissed. Respondent Nathalee Evans shall bear her own
costs on appeal; respondent Thomas McCullough, Jr., shall recover his
ZELON,
J.
We
concur:
PERLUSS, P. J.
WOODS, J.
January 21, 2011, the court denied Evans’s petitions to probate multiple
versions of Ringgold’s will and granted McCullough’s petition for letters of
administration. (Evans v. McCullough (Nov. 14, 2012, B232397) [nonpub. opn.], at
p. 3.) On February 25, 2011, the
court denied Evans’s application to vacate the order appointing McCullough as
administrator, admitted Ringgold’s will to probate, and modified its January
21, 2011 order. After several months of
briefing and objections concerning the contents of the resulting orders, on
April 8, 2011, the court issued an order encompassing Evans’s petitions and
McCullough’s petition. (
B232397) [nonpub. opn.], at p. 3.) The
court denied Evans’s first petition to probate Ringgold’s will; granted in part
her second petition to probate Ringgold’s will in that the will was admitted to
probate; refused to appoint Evans as executor; and appointed McCullough
administrator with will annexed of Ringgold’s estate. (Id.
at pp. 3-4.) On May 20, 2011, the
probate court granted McCullough’s petition for letters of special
administration; denied a petition filed by Evans and a Ringgold grandchild for
letters of special administration; and declined to transfer the case.
and Carter submitted notice of efforts to remove this matter to various federal
courts, prompting this court to request that the parties inform the court of
the present status of all removal efforts.
From the documentation submitted by McCullough, it appears that the
attempts remove the action to federal court were unsuccessful and that the
matter has been remanded on multiple occasions to the California courts.
