In re Probate Appeal of Harris

Syllabus

The plaintiff appealed to the trial court from the decree of the Probate Court admitting the decedent's will to probate. Following the decedent's death, the defendant D filed an application to admit the decedent's will to probate. At the hearing on D's application, S, the notary public who took the attestation of the witnesses to the execution of the decedent's will, testified, inter alia, that she was a notary at the time the will was executed, she would never notarize a document unless all persons who signed the document were present, she recognized the names of the two witnesses as fellow bank employees, she wrote the names of the witnesses on the will directly below where the decedent signed the document, the witnesses signed the self-proving affidavit, and she then signed as notary directly below those signatures, after taking their oath as to the matters contained in the self-proving affidavit. Following the hearing, the Probate Court admitted the decedent's will to probate, concluding that the will complied with the statutory (§ 45a-251) require- ments pertaining to the execution of a valid will. In reaching its decision, the Probate Court concluded that S's testimony, which it found credible, satisfied D's burden of proving that the decedent signed the will in the presence of two witnesses. Specifically, the Probate Court found that the decedent signed the will in the presence of the witnesses who then signed the self-proving affidavit in the presence of the decedent. Relying on our Supreme Court's decision in Gardner v. Balboni (218 Conn. 220), the Probate Court concluded that, under such circumstances, it could see no reason why the same considerations that supported the Probate Court in that case being able to rely on the testator's signature in a self- proving affidavit would not support the same result for the witnesses' signatures in this case because § 45a-251 does not specify the exact place where witnesses must sign a will for it to be valid and the