A recent case decided by the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court (the "SJC") serves as a reminder to keep important estate planning documents, including your will, in a safe place. In Estate of Beauregard, the court upheld a lower court's decision preventing the probate of a copy of a decedent's will. The primary beneficiary of the will had sought admission of the copy claiming that the original was lost. The decedent's parents, who were not beneficiaries of the will, objected to its allowance. The court noted that when an original will cannot be located, Massachusetts law presumes that "the testator destroyed it with the intent to revoke it." In the event of a challenge, the proponent of a will copy must rebut that presumption "by a preponderance of the evidence." In this case, the lower court had reasoned that because the decedent was young (40 years old) and had only recently executed the will, he was unlikely to have lost it. The SJC all but admitted that the lower court could easily have read the facts differently. Because the lower court's findings were not "clearly erroneous," however, the SJC upheld the decision that the proponent of the copy had failed to rebut the presumption that the decedent had intentionally destroyed the will. Without a will, a decedent's probate property will pass pursuant to statute, which, in this case, resulted in a benefit to parties not named in the copy of the will that had been submitted. This case offers a clear lesson that original documents, and in particular wills, should be kept in a safe place where they can be easily found when necessary. Further, if an individual does decide to revoke or destroy his or her will, he or she should make a record of that revocation to avoid any chance that a copy of the revoked document might later be probated.
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Michael J. Simolo, Esq. (413) 732-2301
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