Breault v. Feigenholtz
| Decision Date | 13 April 1966 |
| Docket Number | No. 15301.,15301. |
| Citation | 358 F.2d 39 |
| Parties | William Joseph BREAULT and Bonnie Jo Ellen Kathryn Breault, Plaintiffs-Appellants, v. Harold L. FEIGENHOLTZ and Richard Dahm, individually and as executors and trustees under the Last Will and Testament of Kathryn M. Breault, deceased, Harold L. Feigenholtz, as Trustee and Eugene A. Busch, successor Trustee under the Last Will and Testament of Oscar J. Breault, deceased, Defendants-Appellees. Irma Meyers, Little Sisters of the Poor of Chicago, St. Hedwig Industrial School for Girls, Polish Manual Training School for Boys, Estelle Angela Breault, Kenneth Breault and Wesley Memorial Hospital, a corporation, Defendants. |
| Court | U.S. Court of Appeals — Seventh Circuit |
John J. Yowell, G. Kent Yowell, Chicago, Ill., for appellants.
Claire T. Driscoll, Henry F. Tenney, Richard P. Fredo, Jacob Shamberg, Chicago, Ill., J. Glenn Shehee, Wheaton, Ill., Hirsch E. Soble, Chicago, Ill., for appellees.
Before SCHNACKENBERG and CASTLE, Circuit Judges, and GRUBB, Senior District Judge.
Rehearing Denied April 13, 1966, (en banc).
William Joseph Breault and Bonnie Jo Ellen Kathryn Breault, the plaintiffs-appellants, brought this diversity action in the District Court seeking a declaratory judgment as to their rights as heirs of their grandmother, Kathryn M. Breault, deceased and as heirs of their father, Oscar J. Breault, deceased, whose will they were contesting in an earlier filed and pending diversity action. Plaintiffs also sought an accounting, based on such declaration of rights, from the defendants-appellees, Harold L. Feigenholtz and Richard Dahm, the executors and trustees under the will of Kathryn, with respect to the assets and income of Brolite Company, the stock of which was owned by Kathryn and was part of the corpus of a testamentary trust created by Kathryn's will.
Other defendants-appellees are Feigenholtz as executor and as trustee, and Eugene A. Busch as successor trustee, under the will of Oscar J. Breault. Additional defendants include Oscar's widow, Estelle Angela Breault, Oscar's son by his first wife, Kenneth Breault, and certain charities named in the wills.
The cause was tried as to Count I, which seeks the declaratory relief, on a stipulation of facts, by the Court without a jury.
While the matter was under advisement all of the beneficially interested defendants entered into a settlement agreement with respect to the declaratory judgment action and the related will contest. Plaintiff's petition for approval of the settlement agreement was objected to by the defendant-appellee executors and trustees and was denied by the court on the basis of lack of jurisdiction or authority to terminate the spendthrift trust of which plaintiffs were the beneficiaries under the purported will of Oscar.
Thereafter the court filed a memorandum opinion incorporating its findings of fact and conclusions of law and entered a judgment order decreeing and declaring, in effect, that the trust provisions of the purported will of Oscar were valid; that irrespective of the validity of the probated instrument as the will of Oscar (it being under attack in the pending will contest action as the product of undue influence on the part of Feigenholtz) plaintiffs are entitled to nothing as heirs of Kathryn; and in view of this conclusion dismissing Count II on the ground plaintiffs had no right to the accounting sought therein.
Plaintiffs appealed and assert that the court erred in refusing to approve the settlement agreement, in the declaration of rights made, and in denying plaintiffs the accounting they sought.
Kathryn M. Breault died testate on August 3, 1952. At the time of her death her only heir-at-law was her son, Oscar J. Breault, who was then married to Florence B. Breault. The plaintiffs-appellants are children of the marriage of Oscar and Florence. Defendant Kenneth Breault is a son of Oscar by a prior marriage. Subsequent to Kathryn's death Oscar and Florence were divorced. Oscar then married Estelle Angela Breault.
Kathryn's will, after a specific legacy to Irma Meyers, which has been paid and with respect to which no question is involved herein, gave the very substantial residue of her estate to defendants-appellees Feigenholtz and Dahm as her testamentary trustees. The will created a spendthrift trust for the benefit of Oscar and provided that he should receive the net income from the trust estate quarter annually during his lifetime. The will further provided:
Oscar died on July 16, 1959. In the instrument admitted to probate as his last will and testament, but which is the subject of the will contest action pending in the District Court, defendant-appellee Feigenholtz was named as executor, and after a direction that debts and taxes be first paid, the rest, residue and remainder of the testator's property belonging to him at the time of his death "or over which I have the power of disposition" was given to Feigenholtz, and his successor or successors, as testamentary trustee with direction to pay the net income from the trust estate to the testator's wife, Estelle Angela Breault, for and during her lifetime. It was further provided:
It is conceded that the provisions of the will for the benefit of Oscar's children, if valid, constitute a spendthrift trust. The payments and plan of distribution to be made under the proposed settlement agreement would terminate the spendthrift trust.
In related litigation, instituted on behalf of the plaintiffs-appellants, then minors, and culminating on appeal in a decision by the Illinois Supreme Court (In re Estate of Breault, 29 Ill.2d 165, 193 N.E.2d 824) it was held that the provisions of Oscar's will exercising his testamentary power of appointment over the property in Kathryn's testamentary trust did not constitute such trust property a part of Oscar's estate but that the appointee takes from the estate of the donor, Kathryn. It was further held that Oscar's estate was entitled to an accounting from Kathryn's trustee for the period extending between the date of the last trustee's report approved by Oscar in his lifetime, January 1, 1959, and the date of his death, July 16, 1959, and that in view of Feigenholtz's dual capacity the probate court properly appointed a special administrator to represent Oscar's estate for the purpose of receiving and participating in hearings upon such report.
Plaintiffs-appellants claim that the proposed settlement is not barred by the principle, recognized and followed by the Illinois courts, that the beneficiaries of a spendthrift trust may not by unanimous consent terminate the trust. They contend that such principle is inapplicable here because of the existence of a genuine controversy based on reasonable grounds both as to whether the instrument probated as the will of Oscar is invalid as the product of undue influence and as to the construction and validity of provisions of the wills of both Kathryn and Oscar.
On the merits, plaintiffs-appellants claim interests in the estates of Kathryn and Oscar as their heirs. In this connection they contend the District Court erred in rejecting their contentions that (a) Kathryn's gift to the three charities, "if such will shall not be admitted to probate," violates the...
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Breault's Estate, In re
...(In re Estate of Breault (1963), 29 Ill.2d 165, 193 N.E.2d 824; Breault v. Feigenholtz (N.D.Ill.1965), 250 F.Supp. 551, Aff'd (7th Cir. 1966), 358 F.2d 39, Cert. denied (1966), 385 U.S. 824, 87 S.Ct. 52, 17 L.Ed.2d 61; In re Estate of Breault (1965), 63 Ill.App.2d 246, 211 N.E.2d 424; Breau......
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Breault v. Feigenholtz
...the will of his mother, Kathryn M. Breault, insofar as they are pertinent to the instant litigation, are set forth in Breault v. Feigenholtz, 7 Cir., 358 F.2d 39, 41-42, cert. den. 385 U.S. 824, 87 S.Ct. 52, 17 L.Ed.2d 61, and need not be repeated The record discloses that following the Nov......
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Breault v. Feigenholtz
...years. In re Estate of Breault (1963), 29 Ill.2d 165, 193 N.E.2d 824; Breault v. Feigenholtz (D.C.1965), 250 F.Supp. 551, aff'd (7th Cir. 1966), 358 F.2d 39, cert. denied (1966), 385 U.S. 824, 87 S.Ct. 52, 17 L.Ed.2d 61; In re Estate of Breault (1965), 63 Ill.App.2d 246, 211 N.E.2d 424; Bre......
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In re St. Joseph's Hosp.
...have approved a settlement agreement that eliminated the spendthrift trust limitation imposed by the testator. See also Breault v. Feigenholtz, 358 F.2d 39 (7th Cir.1966): family settlement agreement cannot dissolve spendthrift clause in a In the present case, the settlement agreement conta......