Larkin's Estate, In re

• Decision Date: 02 August 1966
• Citation: 65 Cal.2d 60,52 Cal.Rptr. 441,416 P.2d 473
• Court: California Supreme Court
• Parties: , 416 P.2d 473 In re ESTATE of John LARKIN, Deceased. Kuzma Vasilievich KOROLEV, Maria Fedorovna Malchanova and Prasskovia Pavlovna Krassnova, Plaintiffs and Appellants, v. STATE of California, Defendant and Appellant. In re ESTATE of Liese Marie TERRY, Deceased. Karlina SIMSON, Marie Simson Belte and Via Cecille Paxalinske, Plaintiffs and Respondents, v. STATE of California, Defendant and Appellant. L.A. 27652, 27653. In Bank

Page 441

52 Cal.Rptr. 441

65 Cal.2d 60, 416 P.2d 473

In re ESTATE of John LARKIN, Deceased.

Kuzma Vasilievich KOROLEV, Maria Fedorovna Malchanova and Prasskovia Pavlovna Krassnova, Plaintiffs and Appellants, v. STATE of California, Defendant and Appellant.

In re ESTATE of Liese Marie TERRY, Deceased.

Karlina SIMSON, Marie Simson Belte and Via Cecille Paxalinske, Plaintiffs and Respondents, v. STATE of California, Defendant and Appellant.

L.A. 27652, 27653.

Supreme Court of California,

In Bank.

Aug. 2, 1966.

Rehearing Denied Aug. 31, 1966.

Stanley Mosk and Thomas C. Lynch, Attys. Gen., Elizabeth Miller and Ralph W. Scott, Deputy Attys. Gen., for defendant and appellant.

Mosk & Rudman, Hollywood, Val Linton, Los Angeles, and Edward Mosk, Hollywood, for plaintiffs and appellants and plaintiffs and respondents.

TOBRINER, Justice.

The present cases, consolidated for appeal, require us to construe and apply section 259 of the Probate Code which restricts the freedom of Californians to leave their property to nonresident aliens. That statute makes the validity of such gifts conditional upon the existence of reciprocal rights, on the part of United States citizens, to share without discrimination in estates governed by the law of the foreign beneficiary's own country.

The beneficiaries in the present cases are citizens and residents of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (U.S.S.R.). In both cases the trial court received extensive evidence, both testimonial and documentary, concerning the written law and actual practice of the Soviet Union in matters of inheritance involving citizens of the United States. Without contradiction that evidence establishes that United States citizens share in Soviet estates upon the same terms and conditions as do Soviet citizens and that United States citizens have received, and from all present indications will continue to receive, economically significant interests in Soviet estates. Accordingly, we conclude that the requisite reciprocity has been established and that the wishes of the decedents may be honored.

The appellant in both of the present cases is the State of California, which seeks to escheat to itself the property of the decedents. ¹ It relies upon Probate Code section 259.2, which provides for the escheat of gifts which fail for want of the reciprocity required by Probate Code section 259, if there are no other qualified takers.

Section 259 conditions the validity of testamentary gifts to nonresident aliens upon the 'existence of a reciprocal right upon the part of citizens of the United States to take * * * property upon the same terms and conditions as residents and citizens of the respective countries of which such aliens are residents. * * *' ² By clear and unambiguous language the statute evidences a legislative determination to prevent the passage of California property to the residents of nations which discriminate against our citizens in matters of inheritance. Nothing in the language or history of the statute suggests that the Legislature, in restricting the freedom of our citizens to dispose of their property, sought to impose upon the whole world the system of property ownership and descent which prevails in California.

The reported decisions of our courts confirm the view that section 259 seeks equality of treatment for our citizens rather than identity of substantive law or governmental structure. (Estate of Knutzen (1948) 31 Cal.2d 573, 191 P.2d 747; Estate of Kennedy (1951) 106 Cal.App.2d 621, 629, 235 P.2d 837; Estate of Reihs (1951) 102 Cal.App.2d 260, 227 P.2d 564.) As the court noted in Estate of Miller (1951) 104 Cal.App.2d 1, 12, 230 P.2d 667, 674, '(S)ection 259 does not require that foreign countries have the same judicial system as ours nor even an independent judiciary. All that it requires is that there be no discrimination shown in inheritance matters as between the nationals of that country and the residents and citizens of our own.'

Other authorities concur in this view of section 259. Thus the Oregon Supreme Court, in denying the claims of certain German heirs for want of the reciprocity required by the Oregon statute, carefully distinguished that statute from our own, noting that the two differ significantly in their language. The court concluded that the California statute 'determines the reciprocal quality of rights by comparing the inheritance right of Americans with the inheritance rights of residents of the foreign country, whereas Oregon compares the rights of Americans to inherit in Germany with the rights of Germans to inherit in Oregon.' (In re Krachler's Estate (1953) 199 Or. 448, 263 P.2d 769, 776.) A commentator notes that 'The majority among the reciprocity statutes content themselves with securing equal treatment of their citizens abroad with the nationals of the respective countries. The reciprocity provision in the California Surrogate (sic) Code * * * is of this type.' (Lenhoff, Reciprocity in Function (1953) 15 U.Pitt.L.Rev. 44, 53.) Similarly, California Estate Administration (Cont.Ed. Bar) page 708, declares: 'Section 259 uses the words reciprocal rights to mean merely that United States residents and citizens have the same rights as residents and citizens of the alien's country to take from estates in that country. It does not require that equal rights be granted by the inheritance laws of the two countries.' (See also Recommendation and Study Relating to the Right of Nonresident Aliens to Inherit (1959) 2 Cal.Law Revision Com.Rep. p. B--16.)

Though section 259 requires only the demonstration of a 'reciprocal right' on the part of our citizens 'to take property upon the same terms and conditions' as residents of the foreign country itself, we doubt that mere equality of treatment would suffice. We would almost certainly not find the requisite reciprocity with respect to a country which permitted no inheritance at all, or which made the enforcement of inheritance rights subject to official whim or caprice. Though the statute speaks in terms of equal treatment, we believe that it necessarily imports a requirement that the inheritance rights recognized in the foreign country meet some minimal standard of economic substantiality and that it be shown that such rights are regularly recognized in practice.

On the other hand, the fact that another country recognizes property interests of different scope and content than those which prevail in California, establishes its government on a different pattern than our own, or embraces a political philosophy rejected by our people, does not necessarily negate the existence of reciprocal inheritance rights. Section 259 does not confer upon our courts a broad charter to invalidate gifts made by our citizens to the residents of countries whose patterns of government, political philosophies, or domestic or foreign policies we dislike. We may require no more than a demonstration that the law of the foreign country, as written and as consistently applied in practice, enables our citizens to inherit Economically significant property interests on terms of full equality with the residents of that country.

Section 1875 of the Code of Civil Procedure now provides that questions concerning the nature and content of foreign law constitute matters of law, as to which our courts should take judicial notice. In discharging their new responsibilities under the statute, the courts are empowered to 'resort * * * to appropriate books or documents of reference' and to solicit 'the advice of persons learned in the subject matter.'

The records in the present cases contain voluminous evidence bearing on the written law and actual practice of the Soviet Union in matters of inheritance involving citizens of the United States. The trial courts received the opinions of eminent authorities on Soviet law, both by direct testimony and by deposition, and had before them the testimony of a number of United States citizens who have received inheritances from the U.S.S.R. The records also contain many references to, and quotations from, scholarly works published in both the United States and the U.S.S.R. The evidence adduced affords no basis for doubting the determinations of the trial courts that the Soviet Union extends reciprocal inheritance rights to the citizens of our country.

The fundamental provision of Soviet law relating to the rights of aliens is Article 8 of the Enacting Law of the Civil Code of the R.S.F.S.R., and its counterparts in the other Union Republics. ³ Article 8 came into being in 1922 and continued to control the rights of aliens until the recodification of Soviet law in 1962. In relevant part Article 8 provides: 'The rights of citizens of foreign states with which the R.S.F.S.R. has entered into any agreement shall be regulated by these agreements. Insofar as the rights of foreigners are not provided for by agreements with the appropriate governments and by special laws, the rights of foreigners to free movement on the territory of the R.S.F.S.R., choice of profession, establishment and acquisition of property rights in buildings and land parcels, may be limited by decrees of the proper central organs of the government of the R.S.F.S.R. in agreement with the People's Commissariat of Foreign Affairs. * * *'

Although no term of Article 8 expressly undertakes to confer named rights upon aliens, respondents urge that Soviet jurists and legal scholars uniformly read the article as an affirmative grant of equal rights to aliens. As so construed the article recognizes the equal rights of aliens by making their rights subject to restriction exclusively in the four enumerated areas provided that no terms of treaty or statute prohibit such restriction. In support of this construction, respondents point to the consistently reiterated views of an imposing array of 'persons learned in the subject matter.'

One of the first to testify was Professor Harold Berman of the...