In Re: Estate of Edward Alan Ladd

Syllabus

In this estate matter, the trial court determined that when calculating the value of the decedent's net estate for purposes of determining his widow's elective share, insurance proceeds and retirement benefits that were distributed via beneficiary designation forms and were not distributed pursuant to the decedent's last will and testament would not be included in the net estate value pursuant to Tennessee Code Annotated § 31-4-101(b). The widow's estate has appealed. We affirm the trial court's interpretation of Tennessee Code Annotated § 31-4-101(b) (2015) and the court's method of calculating the widow's elective share by declining to include any assets that passed outside probate in the value of the decedent's net estate. We vacate, however, the trial court's valuation of the decedent's real property, and we remand this issue to the trial court for further determination. Once such value has been established, it should be incorporated into the trial court's calculation of the widow's elective share, utilizing the same methodology as was employed by the court in the original calculation. We decline to award attorney's fees to the widow's estate on appeal.