Salce v. Cardello

Citations

• 348 Conn. 90

Syllabus

The plaintiff, who, along with the defendant, was a beneficiary of a will and a trust executed by their mother, M, appealed to the trial court from the decision of the Probate Court, which declined the plaintiff's request to enforce against the defendant the in terrorem, or no-contest, clauses contained in M's will and trust. The in terrorem clauses provided that, if a beneficiary objected in any manner to any act taken or proposed to be taken in good faith by any fiduciary, or filed any creditor's claim against the estate, that person would forfeit his or her rights as a benefi- ciary under the respective instrument. After M died, G became the executor of M's estate and the trustee of the trust. Subsequently, the defendant and her attorney became aware of two mistakes that G appar- ently made in connection with a certain tax return that he had filed on behalf of the estate. Specifically, G mistakenly listed a bank account that belonged solely to the defendant as an estate asset, and he improp- erly inflated the value of the estate and increased the beneficiaries' tax burdens by failing to include certain deductions. Although the defendant and her attorney brought these errors to G's attention, G declined to amend the tax return or to make the deductions unless the Probate Court instructed him to do so. The defendant then filed with the Probate Court a request for a hearing on those issues, but she later withdrew the request for unknown reasons. Thereafter, the plaintiff filed a complaint in the Probate Court, seeking to enforce the in terrorem clauses, which he alleged the defendant had violated by filing her request for a hearing. The Probate Court determined, inter alia, that the defendant had not violated the in terrorem clauses and ordered G to remove the bank account that belonged to the defendant from the accounting of the estate's assets. The plaintiff appealed to the Superior Court, which con- ducted a trial de novo and found, inter alia, that the defendant