Roy Wayne Hill v. Hill, 2090130 (ala.civ.app. 12-3-2010)

89 So. 3d 116, 2010 WL 4910862, 2010 Ala. Civ. App. LEXIS 367
CourtCourt of Civil Appeals of Alabama
DecidedDecember 3, 2010
Docket2090130
StatusPublished
Cited by8 cases

This text of 89 So. 3d 116 (Roy Wayne Hill v. Hill, 2090130 (ala.civ.app. 12-3-2010)) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Civil Appeals of Alabama primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Roy Wayne Hill v. Hill, 2090130 (ala.civ.app. 12-3-2010), 89 So. 3d 116, 2010 WL 4910862, 2010 Ala. Civ. App. LEXIS 367 (Ala. Ct. App. 2010).

Opinion

PITTMAN, Judge.

This appeal, transferred to this court by the Alabama Supreme Court pursuant to Ala.Code 1975, § 12-2-7(6), concerns the correctness of a judgment of the Mobile Circuit Court dismissing, pursuant to Rule 12(b)(1), Ala. R. Civ. P., a civil action concerning an alleged breach of a contract to make a will.

The action giving rise to this appeal was filed by three adult children of Leroy Hill (“Leroy” or “the decedent”) — Roy Wayne Hill, Todd E. Hill, and Debra Hill Stewart (“the children”) — and by the decedent’s first wife, Bonnie Todd Hill (“Bonnie”), and the plaintiffs’ complaint set forth claims against Deborah D. Hill (“Deborah”), the decedent’s surviving spouse, in her individual capacity and against the decedent’s estate. Among the claims asserted were contractual, quasi-contractual, equitable, and fraud claims stemming from an alleged “Family Inheritance Agreement,” entered into by Leroy and Bonnie in December 1983 in contemplation of their impending divorce, that pertinently provided that (a) Leroy would insure his life for $1,000,000 and make Bonnie the insurance-policy beneficiary and (b) Leroy would convey, by his will, all of his interests in both a coffee company and a farm located in Grand Bay to the children.1 Deborah was subsequently appointed as the personal representative of the decedent’s estate, rendering her, in effect, the sole defendant in the case.

In September 2009, Deborah filed a motion to dismiss the action or, in the alternative, to transfer the action to the family-relations division of the Mobile Circuit Court (created as a separate division pursuant to a general act, Act No. 250, Ala. Acts 1959, that applied to various counties based upon their populations); Deborah contended in that motion that only that division would have jurisdiction to hear the plaintiffs’ claims. Deborah attached to her motion photocopies of the settlement agreement entered into between Leroy and Bonnie in contemplation of their divorce and of the divorce judgment that had been entered by the family-relations division. The plaintiffs filed a response in opposition in which they contended that the family-inheritance agreement had not been merged into the divorce judgment and, therefore, that their claims were not within the exclusive jurisdiction of the family-relations division. Through new counsel, Deborah filed a reply in which she posited that the claim that Leroy had been required by the family-inheritance agreement to maintain $1,000,000 of life-insurance coverage for Bonnie’s benefit was directly contradicted by the subsequently entered settlement agreement and divorce judgment, whereas the claim concerning Leroy’s alleged agreement to convey the coffee company and real property to the children upon his death was inconsistent with the family-relations division’s judgment awarding those items of property solely to him. Deborah also filed various deeds conveying real property from Bonnie to Leroy that had been executed after the divorce judgment. After the plaintiffs had filed a response to Deborah’s reply, the trial court entered a judgment granting Deborah’s motion to dismiss, prompting the plaintiffs’ appeal.

Because the trial court’s judgment grants a motion to dismiss for lack of [118]*118subject-matter jurisdiction, rather than for failure to state a claim, we 'will review the judgment de novo, with no presumption of correctness, in accordance with Hutchinson v. Miller, 962 So.2d 884, 887 (Ala.Civ.App.2007), and State Dep’t of Revenue v. Arnold, 909 So.2d 192, 193 (Ala.2005). That the trial court considered matters outside the pleadings in ruling on Deborah’s motion (matters that may be considered freely in connection with a “speaking” motion under Rule 12(b)(1), Ala. R. Civ. P., see Hutchinson, 962 So.2d at 886 n. 2) does not alter the nature of our appellate review, nor does it mandate consideration of Deborah’s attack upon the trial court’s jurisdiction as a “factual” rather than a “facial” one. See generally Ex parte Safeway Ins. Co. of Alabama, Inc., 990 So.2d 344, 349-50 (Ala.2008) (discussing distinction between a “facial” jurisdictional attack assuming truth of facts pleaded on face of complaint and a “factual” attack impugning factual allegations in complaint by adducing extrinsic evidence, and noting that ruling court may look beyond the allegations contained in the complaint in ruling on either type of attack).

Here, Deboi’ah’s filings in support of her motion to dismiss consisted of copies of the settlement agreement between Bonnie and Leroy, the judgment that had divorced them, and deeds evidencing postjudgment conveyances of real property between them. In contrast, at this stage of the proceedings, Deborah has not adduced evidence tending to impeach the propositions that Bonnie and Leroy did, in fact, enter into the family-inheritance agreement; that the plaintiffs’ claims are ripe (compare Ex parte Safeway, 990 So.2d at 353 (affidavit showed that plaintiffs right to recover damages against uninsured-motorists-insurance carrier was not ripe)); and that those claims were within the general jurisdiction of the circuit court to decide civil actions involving an amount in controversy exceeding $3,000, see generally Ala. Code 1975, § 12-11-30(1), or to hear requests for equitable relief, see. generally Ala.Code 1975, § 12-11-31(1).

In this appeal, the plaintiffs have focused entirely upon the correctness of the trial court’s ruling as to their claim that Leroy breached the alleged family-inheritance agreement by failing to convey to the children at his death the coffee company and real property that had been awarded to Leroy in the divorce judgment. We thus do not disturb the trial court’s judgment as it applies to the plaintiffs’ claims that do not stem from that alleged breach, such as those seeking to enforce Leroy’s alleged promise to insure himself for $1,000,000 for Bonnie’s benefit or his alleged fraud in inducing Bonnie to agree to the settlement agreement incorporated into the divorce judgment. See Thompson v. United Cos. Lending Corp., 699 So.2d 169, 171 (Ala.Civ.App.1997).

We turn now to the principal issue framed by the parties: whether the trial court properly deemed claims arising out of the conveyance-upon-death component of the alleged family-inheritance agreement to be within the exclusive jurisdiction of the family-relations division in light of the incorporation of the settlement agreement between Bonnie and Leroy into the judgment divorcing them. We note that in her brief Deborah seeks to defend the judgment by invoking, for the first time, the doctrines of res judicata and collateral estoppel, as well as by asserting estoppel as to Bonnie (alleging that her having consented to the entry of the divorce judgment that did not expressly incorporate the alleged family-inheritance agreement prevents her from asserting the existence or validity of that agreement in this action). Because Deborah did not, in the trial court, invoke at any time those affir[119]*119mative defenses (see Rule 8(c), Ala. R. Civ. P.) in seeking dismissal of the action, we may not, consistent with due-process principles, consider those omitted grounds as bases for affirmance (even assuming their validity). See Liberty Nat’l Life Ins. Co. v. University of Alabama Health Servs. Found., P.C., 881 So.2d 1018, 1020 (Ala.2008).

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Bluebook (online)
89 So. 3d 116, 2010 WL 4910862, 2010 Ala. Civ. App. LEXIS 367, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/roy-wayne-hill-v-hill-2090130-alacivapp-12-3-2010-alacivapp-2010.