Sacco v. Gordon

515 So. 2d 906, 1987 Miss. LEXIS 2887
CourtMississippi Supreme Court
DecidedNovember 12, 1987
DocketNo. 57306
StatusPublished
Cited by1 cases

This text of 515 So. 2d 906 (Sacco v. Gordon) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Mississippi Supreme Court primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Sacco v. Gordon, 515 So. 2d 906, 1987 Miss. LEXIS 2887 (Mich. 1987).

Opinion

ZUCCARO, Justice,

for the Court:

On March 14, 1983, Jane Sacco, daughter of Fannye Gordon, deceased, filed a complaint in the Chancery Court of Quitman County in her capacity as administratrix of her mother’s estate. Named as defendants were Jim Cleve Gordon, Sarah Gordon Morrison and John Steve Gordon, with Jim being sued both individually and in his capacity as executor of the estate of S.T. Gordon, deceased. In that complaint Sacco sought 1) to set aside conveyances of her life estate in certain property to S.T.’s children and to recover the fair market rental on said properties from the date of conveyance of her life estate to her death, and 2) to recover certain money which Fannye had given to the estate. After a trial on the merits, the chancellor entered judgment for the defendants. From that judgment Sacco appeals, arguing that the chancellor erred in failing to find 1) that Fannye Gordon was in a confidential relationship with Jim Cleve Gordon (her step-son and executor of her late husband’s estate), and 2) that Fannye Gordon was in a confidential relationship with Walter Dreadpn, attorney for the estate of her late husband. We affirm.

FACTS

In 1971, two years after the death of his first wife, S.T. Gordon married Fannye, the cousin of his late first wife. Although Fannye had lived in West Virginia for many years, she moved, at the time of the marriage, to S.T.’s home in Sledge, Mississippi.

When she married S.T., Fannye had three grown children from her first marriage. One of them, Jane Sacco of Morgan-town, West Virginia, is the plaintiff/appellant in the case at bar. S.T. also had three grown children, who are the defend[907]*907ants/appellees in the instant case: Jim Cleve Gordon, John Gordon, and Sarah Jane Gordon Morrison. Jim and John lived in Sledge, where they were partners with their father in a farming operation. Sarah lived in Jackson, Mississippi.

Fannye and S.T. each brought into the marriage certain individually accumulated assets. Among S.T.’s possessions were approximately 1200 acres of farm land and his residence. Fannye, who had managed a university bookstore in West Virginia, brought into the marriage personal property including an automobile, and funds from the sale of a mobile home she had been purchasing. At trial several witnesses, including Jim Gordon and Fannye’s first cousin S.R. Starr, testified that Fannye and S.T. had agreed, at the time of the marriage, that the individual property of each would ultimately go to that partner’s children. Upon S.T.’s death, his children would receive the assets he had accumulated. Similarly, upon Fannye’s death, her children would receive her individual assets. Apparently, this agreement was oral.

Fannye and S.T. made their home in Sledge, where S.T. continued the farming operation he had owned for many years. In 1976, he retired, and his two sons, who were also his partners, took over the farming business.

Over the years, Fannye and S.T. both had health problems. Fannye suffered from emphysema and lung cancer, the latter of which was treated with radiation. S.T.’s primary health problem was alcoholism, for which he was hospitalized several times during the marriage.

S.T. died testate on May 25, 1982. The pertinent provisions of his will were as follows:

1) S.T.’s son, Jim Cleve Gordon, was to serve as executor.
2) Fannye was to own the residence, its furnishings and the farmland for life or until she remarried.
3) The remainder interest in the residence and farmland was to go to Jim, John and Sarah in equal shares.
4) During Fannye’s lifetime, she was to rent the farmland to Jim and John who were to pay her “a fair, just and equitable [rent] ... for the purpose of providing an adequate and sufficient income for her based on [Fannye’s and S.T.’s] status of living at the tipie of [S.T.’s] death.”
5)The residuary legatees were Sarah, John and Jim.

The total value of the residence and the farmland was reported on the estate tax return as $232,900.00. Also listed as assets of the estate were notes totaling $154,-644.00. Most of the notes were from S.T.’s three children for land they had purchased from him. S.T. also had, at the time of his death, $108,000.00 in certificates of deposit, which he held jointly with Fannye. Upon his death they passed to Fannye by right of survivorship.

After S.T.’s death, his children were surprised to learn that the $108,000.00 had passed to Fannye by right of survivorship. They believed the certificates were purchased with their father’s money and that he would want his children to have those funds. They contacted Walter Dreaden, who had been S.T.’s attorney and who was attorney for the estate. They asked Dreaden whether ownership of the certificates could be changed, and he informed them that the certificates were Fannye’s.

The concern which S.T.’s children had about the certificates increased when they learned that the inheritance taxes on their father’s estate amounted to $51,273.00. Although the value of the estate exceeded $300,000.00, the assets consisted primarily of land and the notes which S.T.’s children owed to him upon his death. Thus, there was no cash available with which to pay the inheritance tax.

Fannye had told S.T. that, should he predecease her, she would return to West Virginia, where she had lived before their marriage. In mid-September of 1982, Fannye indeed moved to West Virginia.

In the four months between S.T.’s death and Fannye’s return to West Virginia, Fan-nye visited three or four times in the offices of Walter Dreaden, attorney for the estate. (Although Dreaden died before tri[908]*908al, his deposition was admitted into evidence.) These visits lasted approximately fifteen minutes each. The purpose of them was, in Walter Dreaden’s words, for Fan-nye to “check on the progress” of the estate. At one of these meetings, Dreaden told Fannye “that the accounting firm had received the inventory ... and that they were working on the tax return [and] that in all probability there would be tax due.” Fannye “asked about that.” Dreaden told her he “had no knowledge of any money in the estate with which to pay the taxes.” When Fannye asked how the taxes would be paid, Dreaden told her the personal property would be taken first and then the land, or that money could be borrowed against the land to pay the taxes. Dreaden testified that he had explained to Fannye that the notes which the children owed the estate were personal property and that they therefore would be used to pay taxes before the real estate would be taken.

At a later visit to Dreaden’s office, Fan-nye, according to Dreaden’s testimony, made the statement that the certificates of deposit were “S.T.’s money,” and she asked whether she could put those funds back into the estate for the purpose of paying the taxes and expenses of the estate. He told her she could do so. Dreaden also testified that Fannye told him, “I love these children like I love my own, and I know that S.T. wouldn’t want to see anything happen other than what I am thinking about doing, what I want to do here.”

After learning of Fannye’s desire to help with the taxes and expenses of the estate, Dreaden informed S.T.’s children of Fan-nye’s wishes. In early September, Jim Cleve Gordon, heard “through the grapevine” that Fannye’s daughter Jane Sacco was coming to take Fannye to West Virginia.

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Bluebook (online)
515 So. 2d 906, 1987 Miss. LEXIS 2887, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/sacco-v-gordon-miss-1987.