The Texas Supreme Court ruled on Friday that there is no cause of action in Texas for intentional interference with inheritance, a ruling that will not allow the heirs of a wealthy oilman to invalidate a will change that gave a bulk of their inheritance to charities.
The 22-page opinion provides clarity to an issue that raised confusion among the state’s lower courts last year after the Kinsel v. Lindsey ruling, which noted that SCOTX would leave open the question of whether Texas should recognize a cause of action for intentional interference with inheritance.
“Today, to eliminate continuing confusion over the matter and resolve a split among the courts of appeals, we answer that question,” Chief Justice Nathan Hecht wrote for the majority. “Because existing law affords adequate remedies for the wrongs the tort would redress, and because the tort would conflict with Texas probate law, we hold that there is no cause of action in Texas for intentional interference with inheritance.”
The case involves the estate of John R. “Jack” Archer, a successful oil and gas businessman who died in in 2006. In his 1991 will, he left the bulk of his $7.5 million estate to his brother, Richard, and his six children. Jack Archer designated the little of his estate that he did not leave to his relatives to 12 different charities.
The $7.5 million Archer designated to his family included a 1,000-acre ranch, mineral interests, homes, life insurance, bank accounts, a large coin collection and many other assets.
In 1998, Archer suffered a stroke that he never fully recovered from, which caused him to “regularly misidentify people” and left him “delusional” and “sometimes disoriented,” the opinion says.
A few weeks after his stroke, his attorney, Ted Anderson drafted up documents that made him Archer’s attorney-of-fact. The day Archer signed the documents, his medical records indicated he was “delusional and appeared confused,” the opinion says.
Anderson then hired estate planning attorneys who modified Archer’s will to disinherit his relatives and leave his entire estate to the charities. Although Archer signed the new will, one of the estate planning attorneys testified that he received all his instructions from Anderson and did not talk to Archer before preparing the wills and trust documents, according to the opinion. He also testified that the doctors disagreed about Archer’s mental capacity when he signed the new will.
Before Archer died, his relatives sought a declaratory judgment against the charities that stated Archer lacked the mental capacity to execute the wills and trust documents. The Archers ended up settling with the charities in 2002, which allowed them to keep the bulk of their inheritance. They gave the charities Jack’s coin collection on top of the amount he had already designated to the charities, about $588,054 total.
The Archers then sued Anderson for breach of fiduciary duty, intentional infliction of emotional distress and legal malpractice. Anderson died in 2006 before the litigation got resolved, so the Archers then sued his estate, alleging Anderson influenced Jack to disinherit them. They asked the court to award them the $588,054 they used to settle with the charities and more than $2 million in attorneys’ fees incurred “avoiding Jack’s post-1991 wills and trusts,” the opinion says.
The Archers conceded that Anderson never profited personally from his efforts and that they have never been able to show his motivation other than an unexplained personal malice.
The trial court ruled largely in the Archer family’s favor, but did not award the attorneys’ fees. The Archers and Anderson’s estate both appealed. The appeals court reversed and rendered judgment for Anderson.
The Supreme Court’s opinion affirmed the appeals court’s judgment.
“Whether to recognize a tort to provide an adequate remedy begs the question of what remedy is adequate,” the opinion says. “Existing remedies are not adequate merely because they do not provide the relief a tort would. The fundamental difficulty with the tort is that it claims for the judiciary the authority to supplant or augment statutory probate law and settled remedies and principles whenever they are perceived to be unfair.
“Whether there will be many cases or few in the Houston courts of appeals districts and throughout Texas, we think we should avoid the waste of public and private resources arguing over a question we can answer, especially when the answer is as clear as we think it is.”
Austin attorney Scott Kidd of the Kidd Law Firm represented Anderson at the Supreme Court. Named Ikard Ratliff shareholders Laurie Ratliff and Frank Ikard, also of Austin, represented the Archers.