Tarnawa v. Goode
| Decision Date | 02 July 2019 |
| Docket Number | No. 2018-0202,2018-0202 |
| Citation | 172 N.H. 321,213 A.3d 867 |
| Parties | Evelyn TARNAWA v. Richard GOODE |
| Court | New Hampshire Supreme Court |
Law Office of Joshua L. Gordon, of Concord (Joshua L. Gordon on the brief and orally), for the plaintiff.
Nixon, Vogelman, Slawsky & Simoneau, P.A., of Manchester (Leslie C. Nixon on the brief and orally), for the defendant.
The defendant, Richard Goode, appeals an order of the Superior Court (Messer, J.) granting a petition to partition real property in Manchester brought by the plaintiff, Evelyn Tarnawa. We affirm.
The following facts were found by the trial court or are established by documents submitted to the trial court. The parties are siblings. They received joint title to the property at issue under the will of their mother (the decedent), who died in 2009. The defendant had been living on the property with the decedent prior to her death, and, after her death, chose to continue living there.
In 2010, the plaintiff sent the defendant a proposed agreement purporting to set forth the defendant's rights and responsibilities with respect to the property while he continued to reside there. Although some back-and-forth discussions took place between the parties, the agreement was never executed, and no evidence of any other agreement regarding the property was presented to the trial court. The defendant claims to have made improvements to the property.
Beginning in 2012, the defendant failed to pay the property taxes in full. The plaintiff did not learn of this failure until she was notified by the City of Manchester in 2016. By December 7, 2017, the amount owed for outstanding taxes, costs and interest was $33,803.13, with interest accruing at $11.17 per day.
In 2016, the plaintiff filed a petition for partition, requesting that the court order a sale of the property "and a division of the proceeds of the sale on an equitable basis, i.e. a deduction of all outstanding deficiencies from the Defendant's share of the proceeds." The defendant moved to dismiss for lack of subject matter jurisdiction. He also moved for summary judgment on the basis of res judicata and the decedent's intent to devise the property to the parties as joint tenants with rights of survivorship. The trial court denied those motions and granted the petition to partition. The court found that "[g]iven the small size of the parcel and the residence already constructed thereon," the property "cannot be divided without causing great prejudice or inconvenience to the parties." Thus, the court directed that the property be sold and the proceeds divided between the parties as set forth in the order.
The defendant moved for reconsideration and to stay the order, which the trial court denied. This appeal followed.
We will uphold a trial court's equitable order unless it constitutes an unsustainable exercise of discretion. In doing so, the question is whether the record establishes an objective basis sufficient to sustain the discretionary judgment made. The party asserting that a trial court order is unsustainable must demonstrate that the ruling was unreasonable or untenable to the prejudice of his case. We will not disturb the findings of the trial court unless they lack evidentiary support or are legally erroneous. Indeed, our review of the trial court's decision is limited: we will not substitute our judgment for that of the trial court unless the findings and rulings are unsupported by the evidence or are erroneous as a matter of law. Nor will we reweigh the equities.
Hayes, Tr. v. Connolly, Tr., 172 N.H. 102, 107, ––– A.3d ––––, 2019 WL 1428508 (2019) (quotations and citations omitted).
On appeal, the defendant argues that the trial court erred in failing to dismiss this action because: (1) the court lacked subject matter jurisdiction; (2) the action is barred by res judicata; (3) the claim is really one for breach of contract; and (4) the action is barred by laches. The defendant further argues that if we reject his subject matter jurisdiction and res judicata arguments, we should nevertheless reverse and remand the case for the trial court to "consider the individual circumstances of the parties." (Bolding omitted.)
We first address the defendant's subject matter jurisdiction argument. The trial court, in ruling that it had jurisdiction, relied upon RSA 547:3, II(e), which provides that the probate court1 has concurrent jurisdiction with the superior court over "[p]etitions for partition pursuant to RSA 547-C." RSA 547:3, II(e) (Supp. 2018). The defendant argues that RSA 547:3, II(e) "appears to be in direct conflict with RSA 498:1," which provides, in pertinent part:
The defendant's argument raises an issue of statutory interpretation which presents a question of law subject to our de novo review. See Rogers v. Rogers, 171 N.H. 738, 743, 203 A.3d 85 (2019).
In matters of statutory interpretation, we are the final arbiter of the intent of the legislature as expressed by the words of the statute considered as a whole. We first look to the statutory language, and whenever possible construe that language according to its plain and ordinary meaning. We interpret legislative intent from the statute as written and will not consider what the legislature might have said or add language that the legislature did not see fit to include. When the language of a statute is unambiguous, we do not look beyond it for further indications of legislative intent.
Id. (citations omitted).
The defendant cites, among other provisions, RSA 547:3, I(a) (2007) and RSA 547:3, I(c) (Supp. 2018), which vest the probate court with exclusive jurisdiction over the probate of wills and the interpretation and construction of wills, and RSA 547:9 (2007), which provides that "[a]ll proceedings in relation to the settlement of the estate of a person deceased shall be had in the probate court of the county in which his will was proved or administration on his estate was granted." He asserts that "[t]he obvious legislative intent was to vest the probate court with full and exclusive jurisdiction to resolve all issues relating to the distribution of property at death." See RSA 547:3, I (Supp. 2018) (granting the probate court exclusive jurisdiction over certain matters). He then concludes that the only way to resolve the apparent conflict between RSA 547:3, II(e) and RSA 498:1 is "to construe RSA 547:3, II(e) as not applying to the settlement of [a deceased person's estate]." (Quotation omitted.) As we read the defendant's argument, he appears to contend that if a property is acquired through settlement of a decedent's estate, jurisdiction over its subsequent partition lies exclusively with the probate court.
We rejected a similar invitation to broadly construe the probate court's jurisdiction in Rogers, 171 N.H. at 745, 203 A.3d 85. In Rogers, the plaintiff and defendant, husband and son of the decedent, respectively, were the devisees of the decedent's estate. Rogers, 171 N.H. at 739-40, 203 A.3d 85. The defendant was also appointed executor of the estate. Id. at 740, 203 A.3d 85. Several years after the estate was probated, the plaintiff brought an action in superior court against the defendant for breach of fiduciary duty, fraud, negligence and unjust enrichment, based upon allegations that the defendant had misrepresented the value of an estate asset during the estate's administration. Id. at 740-41, 203 A.3d 85. The defendant moved to dismiss, arguing that "all of the plaintiff's claims are related to the estate, and the administration of the estate, and the values of estate assets, and the disbursement of the estate assets and, therefore, the probate court has exclusive jurisdiction over the parties' dispute pursuant to RSA 547:3." Id. at 741, 203 A.3d 85 (quotation and brackets omitted). On reconsideration, the trial court dismissed the action, finding that the probate court had exclusive jurisdiction over the matter. Id. at 741-42, 203 A.3d 85.
We reversed, rejecting an interpretation of RSA 547:3 that would vest the probate court with exclusive jurisdiction over a common law tort claim "based solely upon the fact that some of the alleged conduct occurred during or as a part of the administration of an estate." Id. at 745, 203 A.3d 85. Instead we applied the analysis of DiGaetano v. DiGaetano, 163 N.H. 588, 50 A.3d 10 (2012), to determine whether the probate court had jurisdiction. Id. Furthermore, we clarified:
[F]or the purposes of determining the nature of a party's claim in the context of DiGaetano' s jurisdictional analysis, it is the manner by which an action relates to an estate that is the critical inquiry, not whether a relationship simply exists. Therefore, the determination of subject matter jurisdiction in this case depends upon whether a direct connection exists between the plaintiff's claims and the composition, administration, sale, settlement, and final distribution of the estate, and whether the connection relates to the estate or will in a manner that mandates the probate court's exclusive jurisdiction.
Id. at 746, 203 A.3d 85. We concluded that the manner in which the plaintiff challenged the defendant's conduct did not Id. at 747, 203 A.3d 85.
The plaintiff's claim in the instant case is similarly tangential to the decedent's estate. That estate was...
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