Estate of Hutaff CA4/3

INTRODUCTION

When Caroline Hutaff died in 2019, she left a will (the Will) creating a testamentary trust naming her sister Venus Thecla Mynatt 1 (Mynatt) as trustee and her only child, her son Jason Christopher Kahler, as beneficiary. The Will provides that if Jason were to die “before becoming entitled to receive distribution of his entire trust,” then the trust property would be distributed to Mynatt outright. A year later, while Hutaff’s Will was still in probate, Jason died intestate. From out of the woodwork appeared Jason’s three half-siblings—children born to Jason’s father after leaving Jason and his mother when Jason was a newborn—to claim the property that was in the testamentary trust. The probate court, in granting the half-siblings’ petition for instructions, concluded that under the terms of Hutaff’s will Jason was, at the time of his death, entitled to receive distribution of the entirety of the trust property. Accordingly, the court ruled the trust property would pass to the half-siblings as Jason’s heirs. Exercising de novo review, we reverse. We conclude that, under the plain meaning of the terms of the will, Jason died before he was entitled to receive the…