JP Morgan Chase Bank, N.A. v. Longmeyer

275 S.W.3d 697, 2009 Ky. LEXIS 9, 2009 WL 160415
CourtKentucky Supreme Court
DecidedJanuary 22, 2009
Docket2005-SC-000313-DG
StatusPublished
Cited by5 cases

This text of 275 S.W.3d 697 (JP Morgan Chase Bank, N.A. v. Longmeyer) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Kentucky Supreme Court primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
JP Morgan Chase Bank, N.A. v. Longmeyer, 275 S.W.3d 697, 2009 Ky. LEXIS 9, 2009 WL 160415 (Ky. 2009).

Opinions

Opinion of the Court by

Chief Justice MINTON.

I. INTRODUCTION.

JP Morgan Chase Bank’s predecessor, Bank One, was trustee of a revocable living trust created by Ollie Skonberg, which provided lifetime income to Skonberg and substantial benefits of the remainder to several charitable and religious institutions at Skonberg’s death. Skonberg revoked that trust and executed a new estate plan that eliminated the charitable and religious institutions as beneficiaries under circumstances raising questions of undue influence; and Bank One so informed the former trust beneficiaries, who sued Skon-berg’s estate after her death to set aside the new estate plan. After Skonberg’s estate settled the suit with the beneficiaries, it then brought the instant case, claiming Bank One, as trustee, breached duties owed to Skonberg, including a duty not to disclose to the beneficiaries the fact and possibly dubious circumstances of the trust revocation. The trial court granted summary judgment in favor of Bank One. The Court of Appeals reversed.

We granted discretionary review to examine the law in Kentucky concerning the scope of the duties owed by a trustee or a former trustee of a living trust with testamentary provisions to the testamentary [699]*699beneficiaries of the trust upon the occurrence of a change in the beneficiary designation. Holding that Kentucky imposes a duty on the trustee of a living trust to inform the testamentary beneficiaries, we reverse the Court of Appeals and reinstate the trial court’s judgment.

II. FACTS.

In 1984, Ollie W. Skonberg, a wealthy widow known to be frugal, hired James L. Coorssen, an attorney, to prepare an estate plan for her that included a will and a revocable living trust. The trust named Skonberg as income beneficiary for her life. Other trust provisions specified beneficiaries who would receive various amounts of the estate at her death.

Three years later, Skonberg again engaged Coorssen to make some modifications in her estate plan, including instructions that a sizable portion of her estate be left in trust for the benefit of several charities, including The Salvation Army, the Louisville Deaf Oral School, the Cedar Lake Foundation, the Cabbage Patch Settlement, and Highland Presbyterian Church. This estate plan designated Bank One’s predecessor, Liberty National Bank, as trustee. The record indicates that Skon-berg paid Coorssen $100 for his work on this multi-million dollar estate plan.

Ten years passed, and Skonberg, who was by then ninety-three years old and in such declining health that she was nearly bedridden, hired another attorney, John M. Longmeyer, to make drastic changes in her estate plan. On August 27, 1997, after the new documents had been prepared, Skonberg revoked her 1987 testamentary trust and executed a new trust instrument, naming Longmeyer as sole trustee. Skon-berg died six weeks later.

For some time before her death, Skon-berg’s deteriorating health required her to have full-time care in her home. Vicki Smothers, Skonberg’s main caregiver, played a predominate role in Skonberg’s life at that time. Smothers fed Skonberg, handled her financial affairs, and arranged all of her appointments. It was Smothers who suggested and contacted Longmeyer for the purpose of reviewing and revising the estate plan. Smothers testified that Longmeyer was randomly selected from listings in the telephone book.

Before drafting the new estate plan, Longmeyer met with Skonberg and Smothers. Iri fact, Smothers gave Long-meyer an outline of the desired revisions. The changes, reflected in Smothers’s handwritten outline, included the removal of the charities as beneficiaries and the increase in the bequest to Smothers from $20,000 to $500,000. In addition, Longmeyer himself would replace Bank One as trustee of the revocable trust. In his role as trustee, the record indicates that Longmeyer received an annual compensation of approximately $100,000. Longmeyer was also paid $500 at the outset by Smothers with a check drawn on Skonberg’s bank account. Although the record is not clear regarding the total amount Longmeyer received for revising Skonberg’s estate plan, it is clear that he received at least $13,000; and he may have been paid as much as $25,000. In actuality, Longmeyer delegated the responsibility for drafting the documents to his son-in-law, an out-of-state attorney who was not licensed to practice law in Kentucky.

During the relevant time leading up to the revised estate plan, the only medical doctor to see Skonberg and to consider her testamentary capacity was another Long-meyer family member, his brother-in-law, Dr. John Lach, who visited Skonberg for a total of forty-five, minutes. The witnesses to Skonberg’s signing of the revised documents were Longmeyer, his wife, and his secretary.

[700]*700After being informed of the change in trastees shortly before Skonberg’s death, Bank One entered into an “investment agency agreement” with Longmeyer, the new trustee. This agreement delegated the management of the trust funds to Bank One. Upon Skonberg’s death, Long-meyer was appointed executor and trustee of the estate; and Bank One continued to manage the trust funds in accordance with the investment agency agreement. But Longmeyer terminated the investment agency agreement about a month after Skonberg’s death and transferred the trust funds to Paine Webber.

A short while later, in December 1997, Bank One contacted an experienced attorney in trusts and estates, Robert L. Hal-lenberg, regarding Skonberg’s estate and the questionable circumstances that had culminated in the new estate plan. Hal-lenberg responded in an opinion letter, dated May 26, 1998, in which he advised Bank One that it had an obligation to notify the former trust beneficiaries of the nature of the revisions and the dubious circumstances involved.

Acting on Hallenberg’s opinion letter, Bank One sent letters to each of the institutions that had been removed as beneficiaries by the Longmeyer-prepared instrument. Unknown to Bank One at that time, at least one of the charities had already learned of the effect of the Long-meyer revisions and had begun an investigation of its own.

The charities, as former beneficiaries, filed a will contest action against the decedent’s estate and others, contending that Skonberg was unduly influenced in the drafting of the 1997 instrument. In due course, Longmeyer, as executor of the estate, settled on the eve of trial with the former beneficiaries for $1.875 million.

The case at hand arose when Longmeyer, as executor of the estate, brought suit against Bank One, as trustee of the 1987 revocable trust, to recover the $1.875 million the estate had paid in settlement to the former beneficiaries. The crux of Longmeyer’s claim was that Bank One breached fiduciary duties when it disclosed what Longmeyer contended was confidential information about the trust to the former beneficiaries. Longmeyer contended that if Bank One had kept quiet about the 1997 revisions, the former beneficiaries would have been unaware that they had been ousted as Skonberg’s beneficiaries and would not have brought the suit that resulted in the settlement.

The circuit court granted summary judgment in favor of Bank One, concluding that Bank One had a fiduciary duty as trustee of the 1987 revocable trust to inform the adversely affected beneficiaries of its suspicions surrounding Longmeyer’s 1997 estate plan revisions.

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JP Morgan Chase Bank, N.A. v. Longmeyer
275 S.W.3d 697 (Kentucky Supreme Court, 2009)

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Bluebook (online)
275 S.W.3d 697, 2009 Ky. LEXIS 9, 2009 WL 160415, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/jp-morgan-chase-bank-na-v-longmeyer-ky-2009.