Goter v. Brown, 95-0046
| Decision Date | 29 May 1996 |
| Docket Number | No. 95-0046,95-0046 |
| Citation | 682 So.2d 155 |
| Parties | 21 Fla. L. Weekly D1257 Ronald D. GOTER, as Personal Representative of the Estate of John T. Murphy, Appellant, v. Dorothy BROWN, Appellee. |
| Court | Florida District Court of Appeals |
Sept. 25, 1996.
Motion for Rehearing Stricken Nov. 6, 1996.
Paul R. Regensdorf of Fleming, O'Bryan & Fleming, P.A., Fort Lauderdale, for appellant.
Robert A. Huth, Jr., of English, McCaughan & O'Bryan, P.A., Boca Raton, for appellee.
In his last will--which had been revised not long before his death--decedent left to Ronald Goter, "the rest, residue and remainder of my property * * * including stocks, bonds and other financial securities held in brokerage accounts." At the time of his death, he held funds in an IRA account with PaineWebber. His sister, Dorothy Brown, claimed the IRA funds, arguing that the provision in the will was ineffective to countermand the designated beneficiary in the IRA account papers. The probate judge agreed with her. He appeals. We reverse.
The probate judge concluded that an IRA account is "a trust account only as it applies to federal tax law," citing Goeke v. Goeke, 613 So.2d 1345 (Fla. 2d DCA), rev. denied, 621 So.2d 1065 (Fla.1993). 1 From this proposition, the court reasoned that the IRA "cannot be established as a 'trust account,' the distribution of which can now be determined by the decedent's last will."
We are unwilling to make such broad pronouncements regarding the nature of IRA's. For one thing, these accounts are held in many forms, e.g. traditional trust accounts, bank accounts, stock brokerage accounts, and even insurance policies. They may be true trusts, or they may be merely custodial accounts in which the custodian has little if any power to decide on the disposition of the funds. To say that they are all categorically the one or the other is to ignore the versatility and flexibility of this tax deferral device. It is necessary in every case to look to the form of the account and the documentary language governing the holding.
In this instance, the IRA documents show that initially decedent designated his sister as the primary beneficiary. At that time, his will provided that she would take all of his employment related pension and retirement funds. The IRA documents do not specify a procedure for changing the beneficiary, however, but do provide that the asset manager, PaineWebber:
"may conclusively rely upon, and shall be protected in acting upon, any written or oral order from the Customer or any notice, request, consent, certificate or other instrument or paper believed by it to be genuine and to have been properly executed, so long as it acts in good faith in taking or omitting to take any action in reliance thereon."
Years later, when decedent made the critical change to his will naming Goter to take any stock brokerage accounts, he also then gave his sister all his life insurance benefits and a $50,000 specific bequest, thereby changing the entire scheme of his testamentary distribution.
If a telephone call or other form of oral instruction by decedent to PaineWebber would have sufficed to make an enforceable change in the designated primary beneficiary of the IRA, then surely the more formal--and quite reliable--means of naming the beneficiary in a properly executed will should be sufficient as well. Reading the language of the IRA documents and the last will together, we conclude that in this case the testamentary change was entirely effective to change beneficiaries. The IRA is undoubtedly a brokerage account within the meaning of the residuary clause of the will. It follows that Goter takes the brokerage account.
REVERSED.
ON MOTION FOR REHEARING
In her motion for rehearing, appellee Brown newly advances what she describes as a missing second page to the account agreement between the testator and PaineWebber, Incorporated. In this previously unseen second page--which, we hasten to add, was never adduced in the trial court--there is the following provision:
If this text had been presented to the trial judge and accepted as the controlling document, plainly under the rationale of our decision we would have decided on the merits that the IRA would not then pass under the particular residuary clause in this case.
The problem, however, is that the document was never raised or presented in the trial court. Indeed, during oral argument in the case, appellee Brown's counsel responded to questioning as follows:
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