Estate of Little, Matter of
| Decision Date | 26 June 1986 |
| Docket Number | No. 51134-9,51134-9 |
| Citation | 721 P.2d 950,106 Wn.2d 269 |
| Court | Washington Supreme Court |
| Parties | In the Matter of the Estate of Pearl Fitzhugh LITTLE, Deceased. |
Edwards & Barbieri, Malcolm Edwards, Catherine Wright Smith, Howard Goodfriend, Seattle, for appellant.
Charles Collins, Everett, for respondent.
This case presents issues of first impression concerning this state's ancestral estate statute (RCW 11.04.035), involving the intestate succession of property. Since the issues raised by this appeal relate only to the applicability of the statute to real property, we do not address whether the statute may also apply to personal property.
Appellants seek review of a judgment of the trial court awarding the estate of Pearl Little to respondents, such award being based on the trial court's interpretation of the ancestral estate statute. The case was tried on affidavits.
Pearl Little died intestate on July 13, 1983. She had neither Appellants (the Squiqui claimants) are Pearl Little's paternal half blood relatives. They are related to her through her father's previous marriage to Mary Pearson. Appellant Bert Squiqui is Pearl Little's nephew, appellant Francine Wilson is her grandniece, and appellant Patricia Ryan is her great grandniece.
children nor brothers or sisters. Her husband and her parents (Charles Mason Fitzhugh and Maggie Fitzhugh) predeceased her. Only collateral relatives were alive at the time of the decedent's passing
Respondents (the Cepa claimants)--20 have been identified--are Pearl Little's maternal relatives. They are second and third cousins of Pearl Little since they are all descendents of Emma Cepa, her maternal aunt.
Pearl Little's principal asset at the time of her passing was a 77-acre parcel of waterfront property at Roche Harbor on San Juan Island. It had an assessed value of $1,167,480. Pearl Little's grandfather originally homesteaded this property, receiving a homestead patent to it from President Chester A. Arthur in 1884. The grandfather died in 1900, and the property passed to his wife. In 1905, she then deeded the property to Pearl Little's mother, Maggie, as Maggie's separate property. In 1911, Maggie married Charles Mason Fitzhugh. In 1924 they mortgaged the land as security for a $550 bank loan, both signing the mortgage. Afterwards, Maggie deeded the land to Charles in return for his agreement to pay the mortgage. Later in 1924, they also executed a community property agreement under which all of their property would pass to the surviving spouse. Charles died in 1927, and the property passed to Maggie.
On November 10, 1943, the day before Maggie Fitzhugh died intestate, she deeded most of the land comprising her estate to her daughter, Pearl Little. Pearl was Maggie's only child and sole heir.
The deed contained recitals both of consideration for the transfer and of gift. It read in part WARRANTY DEED (Statutory Form)
THE GRANTOR Maggie Anderson Fitzhugh, widow of Mason Fitzhugh, deceased, and not re-married For and in consideration of Ten Dollars and Love and Affection in hand paid, convey and warrant to Pearl Fitzhugh Little, whose husband is W.H. Little, but as her sole and separate property by this gift the following described Real Estate, situated in the County of San Juan State of Washington: the following described lands ...
(Italics ours.)
Maggie Fitzhugh excluded an Indian burial ground on the land from the property so deeded to Pearl. Both Maggie and Pearl were members of the Lummi and Clallam Indian Tribes. On November 11, 1943, Maggie died intestate. At a subsequent Bureau of Indian Affairs probate proceeding, it was determined that Pearl, as Maggie's only child and sole heir, had also inherited the Indian burial ground.
Pearl Little died on July 13, 1983, some 40 years after her mother. A probate proceeding was commenced in San Juan County. It was initially indicated that the appellant Squiqui claimants were her only heirs, but on January 31, 1984, the respondent Cepa claimants filed a Notice of Claim of Heirship. A trial was held to determine who would inherit Pearl Little's estate. The trial court held that the real estate at issue came to the intestate Pearl Little from her mother, Maggie Fitzhugh. The trial court also held that the ancestral estate statute (RCW 11.04.035) excluded the appellant Squiqui claimants, who were related to decedent by the half blood, from the inheritance and awarded the property to the respondent Cepa claimants. Appellants' post trial motions were denied and this appeal followed.
The appellant Squiqui claimants sought and were granted direct review by this court.
IN GENERAL--STATUTORY TREATMENT OF ANCESTRAL ESTATE AND THE HALF BLOOD IN INTESTATE SUCCESSION IN THE STATE OF WASHINGTON.
A brief overview of the law in this regard is helpful to an understanding of the issues before us.
We start with the basic proposition that since the dominion of an owner over his or her property ends at the owner's death, the law must provide for the devolution of that property. If the owner has chosen to dispose of it by will, the property will pass according to the terms of the will. If there is no will, as here, the law alone, through the rules of descent and distribution, accomplishes the transfer and designates the persons who are to take. 1
"It has been said that the passing of property upon intestacy is pursuant to a statutory will, which determines the property passing as well as the identity of the recipients, and which is considered to be such a distribution as the intestate presumably would have made had he made a will." 2 (Footnotes omitted.)
Since succession to intestate property is at the will of (and subject to the sovereign political power of) the state, the state may regulate and control such succession as it deems necessary. Thus, the Legislature may change, condition, or abrogate the law of succession, subject only to certain constitutional limitations, none of which are pertinent to this case. 3
The statutes of descent and distribution in some states contain a modified form of the common law doctrine of ancestral property. These statutes recognize a difference between estates which were acquired by the intestate's own efforts and those derived from some ancestor, and provide to the effect that an estate of the latter kind shall go to those who are of the blood of the ancestor from whom the estate was derived. While these statutes vary in their phraseology and import, they all have as their basic theme the keeping of such property in the line of the blood from As one commentator on the subject has observed, 5 And, as this same commentator further observed, 6 (Footnotes omitted.)
whence it came. 4
Legislative treatment of the "ancestral" and "half blood" restrictions in this state has gone through four separate stages.
Originally, our descent and distribution statute provided as follows:
The degrees of kindred shall be computed according to the rules of the civil law, and the kindred of the half blood shall inherit equally with those of the whole blood, in the same degree.
Laws of 1854, § 235, p. 307. This statute simply provided that relatives of the half blood would take equally with those of the whole blood in the same degree, and without regard to whether the property was ancestral property.
The second version was adopted in 1945. It provided:
The degree of kindred shall be computed according to the rules of the civil law, and the kindred of the half blood shall inherit equally with those of the whole blood in the same degree, unless the inheritance comes to the Laws of 1945, ch. 72, § 1, p. 216-17. This statute, as with most statutes of this type, merged a limited version of the doctrine of ancestral estate and inheritance by the half blood. As this court held in In re Estate of Kurtzman, 65 Wash.2d 260, 265, 396 P.2d 786 (1964), it was the Legislature's intent in adopting this statute, "to circumscribe the inheritance rights of only kindred of the half blood, in certain circumstances, and not to modify the method of computing kinship."
intestate by descent, devise, or gift from one of his ancestors, or kindred of such ancestor's blood, in which case all those who are not of the blood of such ancestors shall be excluded from such inheritance: ...
The third version was that adopted by the 1965 Legislature as part of a comprehensive reform of the probate laws recommended by the Board of Governors of the Washington State Bar Association. This version read:
Kindred of the half blood shall inherit the same share which they would have inherited if they had been of the whole blood.
Laws of 1965, ch. 145, § 11.04.035, p. 1436. This then returned to the original version. According to commentators Robert A. Stewart and John Richard Steincipher (the latter being one of the drafters of the probate reform legislation), the effect of this legislative change would be to declare "inter alia that kindred of the half blood inherit the same share which they would have inherited if they had been of the whole blood, [and] the 'anachronistic doctrine' of ancestral property will have been repudiated." (Footnote omitted.) 7 The reason for this change was not that there might not be instances where bloodline integrity of property was desirable, but...
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