Ducheneaux v. SECRETARY OF INTERIOR OF US
| Decision Date | 24 October 1986 |
| Docket Number | Civ. No. 85-5161. |
| Citation | 645 F. Supp. 930 |
| Parties | Marie DUCHENEAUX, Plaintiff, v. SECRETARY OF the INTERIOR OF the UNITED STATES, June Ellen Ducheneaux Ledbetter, Lillian Lynn Ducheneaux, Ria Elaine Ducheneaux Seaboy, Orville Rolland Ducheneaux, Larry Douglas Ducheneaux, Deanna Ducheneaux Mulloy, Marlene Kay Ducheneaux, Allen Theodore Ducheneaux, Superintendent of Cheyenne River Agency, and U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs, Defendants. |
| Court | U.S. District Court — District of South Dakota |
Newell E. Krause, Krause, Seiler & Cain, Mobridge, S.D., for plaintiff.
Krista Clark, Dakota Plains Legal Service, Eagle Butte, S.D., for defendants.
Lonnie Bryan, Asst. U.S. Atty., Rapid City, S.D., for defendant Secretary of the Interior.
This case is before the Court on a judicial review of the decision of the United States Department of the Interior, which denied Plaintiff her claimed interest by reason of her contribution during marriage in certain land held in trust by the government. Jurisdiction is conferred upon the Court by 5 U.S.C. § 706.
Individual defendants are nieces and nephews of Douglas Leonard Ducheneaux, deceased, husband of the Plaintiff. Defendant Secretary of the Interior of the United States is joined as an indispensable party since the property in question is held in trust under 25 U.S.C. § 465.
Marie Ducheneaux (wife) is the widow of Douglas Leonard Ducheneaux (husband). She is a non-Indian. He was an enrolled member of the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe, who died testate on April 11, 1980, at the age of 65. At the time of his death the couple had been married for 32 years. During the last nine years the parties had been separated.
The couple was married on February 3, 1948. He was 34 and she was 41. She had about $4,000 in assets at the time of the marriage, including money in a bank account, furniture, and household appliances. The record shows the only property brought to the marriage by the husband was his allotment of 160 acres of trust land situated on the Cheyenne River Indian Reservation. Some of Plaintiff's money was used to purchase a store and gas station in Winner, South Dakota, which became the first business venture of the parties. For a time after the marriage the couple operated the store and gas station, but in the early 1950s they sold the business and moved to the Cheyenne River Indian Reservation. The parties started in the ranching business with the aid of the wife's contribution of money and her husband's contribution of 160 acres of trust land.
After the couple moved to the reservation they experienced the rigors of ranch and reservation life. They initially lived in a quonset building with no electricity or running water. The building was heated by a wood-burning stove. As was the case with most ranch couples, the wife kept house, gardened, and raised and sold some chickens. The proceeds from the sale of the store and gas station in Winner were used to buy livestock and for ranching expenses.
The wife remained on the reservation until the parties separated in 1971. The husband remained until his death. During the marriage five quarters of trust land were purchased from other Indian owners. This constitutes the property which is the subject of this action. These quarters were adjacent to the husband's original quarter section. The land purchased was trust land and as it was purchased from time to time it was continued in trust by the United States government for Douglas Leonard Ducheneaux.1 The land was placed in "trust status" in order to avoid the payment of state and local taxes. That this was the purpose of the trust arrangement is without dispute. Since the husband was Indian and property could only be held in trust for Indians, the Plaintiff was not recognized by the government as having any interest in the land.
Shortly after the parties separated the husband started divorce proceedings in the South Dakota Circuit Court on August 23, 1971. These proceedings were never completed, although the couple remained separated and apparently did not see one another after that date.
On March 20, 1972, the husband was ordered to pay $150 per month as temporary support to the wife. The divorce was not granted because a property settlement could not be reached and the state trial court felt that it did not have jurisdiction to divide or dispose of the reservation property (including trust status property) absent such agreement. Any division of the trust property would have to be approved by the Secretary of the Interior upon an application submitted by the husband as trust beneficiary. Since the husband would submit no application and the State Circuit Court felt it lacked jurisdiction, the matter languished up to the time of the husband's death.
When the state court refused to complete the divorce proceedings, the wife unsuccessfully attempted to seek partition of the land by an action in federal court in South Dakota.2
During the period of separation the court-ordered $150 monthly support payment was unilaterally discontinued by the husband, necessitating further nonsupport proceedings. The action was settled by the husband agreeing to reinstate the payments. The payments continued until the death of the husband.
A few months before his death, the husband executed a will which expressly disinherited Marie Ducheneaux and left his entire estate to the children of his half-brother, Allen Theodore Ducheneaux.3 The seven individual beneficiaries are "Indians" under federal law.
Subsequent to the husband's death the Plaintiff filed objections to the will. Hearings on the will were held on July 23, 1980, and October 29, 1980. On August 4, 1983, Garry V. Fisher, ALJ, issued his Order Approving Will and Decree of Distribution. The order upheld the will and distributed all of the trust property to the seven nieces and nephews equally.
The Plaintiff raised the issue now before this Court namely, that except for the original allotment, the trust real estate was acquired by the parties through their joint efforts and accordingly she is entitled to an equal share in the property.
The ALJ rejected this claim. The ALJ held that the Plaintiff, a non-Indian, could not claim a trust relationship with the United States and therefore could claim no interest in "trust" property which under the law is held for Indians only. The ALJ enumerated the factors which led to his conclusion as follows:
Several factors, considered duly proven in the record, lead to this conclusion. First, there is no trust relationship between the United States and Marie Ducheneaux. Whatever the motive for placing ownership of the purchased lands, the United States is not shown by the evidence to be a party to the transaction and there is no evidence of any consent by the government to hold any interest for the benefit of Marie Ducheneaux. If Marie permitted this situation to continue up to the death of the Testator, she is then the subject of a misplaced trust rather than any constructive or resulting trust. She has failed to produce any evidence that Testator undertook any obligation to her to preserve her interest in the properties. Secondly, the only word we have from the Testator is his written word in the will whereby he specifically disinherits his wife, Marie. This is actually evidence contrary to Marie's assertion that Testator had an understanding she owned an interest in the trust properties. If there were, he denied it by testamentary act. Thirdly, the law of the case is simple. Tooahnippah v. Hickel, 397 U.S. 598, (1970) clearly and unequivocally limits the authority of the Secretary of the Interior, where it is determined the testamentary act is voluntary, free from duress, undue influence or mistake. The Secretary must approve the will, though it be unfair or improvident, and may not substitute his judgment for that of the testator. Here the testator grants his trust estate to his nephews and nieces. Fourthly, the stipulation agreement establishing testator's obligation to pay support has the appearance at least of defining the relative positions of the parties to the marital separation. It is not considered here as definitive of all obligations of testator in his role as husband but since the separation was complete and permanent it was a significant time to assert whatever claim of right she had in the trust property. The claim of Marie Ducheneaux is denied.
The Plaintiff filed a petition for rehearing on September 16, 1983, which was denied by Keith L. Burrowes, ALJ, on October 3, 1983. She then appealed to the Interior Board of Indian Appeals (IBIA) on November 8, 1983.
On May 31, 1985, some 18 months later, the order of Administrative Law Judge Keith L. Burrowes was affirmed by Jerry Muskrat, Administrative Law Judge of the IBIA.
While the Plaintiff originally had contended that the state court order requiring the monthly payment of $150 constituted a continuing obligation of the estate, that position appears to have been abandoned after the issue was resolved against the Plaintiff. The ALJ found that there was no evidence that either the original 1972 order establishing payments nor the 1974 order dismissing the complaint for nonsupport contained any requirement that the payments should become an obligation of the husband's estate. Therefore, the ALJ held that the wife was not entitled to such payments from the estate.
The ALJ next considered the issue of whether the Plaintiff was entitled to a portion of the trust property under the theory of a resulting trust by reason of her claim that the property was acquired by the joint efforts of both parties to the marriage. This was her contribution claim. The ALJ concluded that she could not claim a resulting purchase money trust in the Indian trust land because the federal government did not owe her any trust...
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Ducheneaux v. Secretary of the Interior of U.S., s. 87-5023
...I. BACKGROUND. The facts and procedural history are thoroughly set out in the district court's opinion, Ducheneaux v. Secretary of the Interior, 645 F.Supp. 930 (D.S.D.1986), and will only be summarized Douglas Ducheneaux, a member of the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe, married Marie Snoble, a ......
- United States v. Woolbright, 86-128CR(1).
- US v. Rojas, 89-10032-01.