Estate of Clementi

Langston Williams and Gerold G. Williams for Contestants and Appellants.

Glicker & Associates and Brian Glicker for Objector and Respondent Richard E. Weisz.

Edmund G. Brown, Jr., Attorney General, Belinda J. Johns, Assistant Attorney General, and James M. Cordi, Deputy Attorney General, for Objector and Respondent Attorney General of the State of California.

FYBEL, J.—

The will of Joseph Clementi, Jr., was admitted to probate. He willed assets to his siblings, the drafter of his will, and to a charitable foundation or trust to be run by the will's drafter. Clementi's nephew and niece, Salvatore Chimenti and Adeline DiAmbrosio (appellants) filed a petition to revoke probate. The petition was denied, and this appeal followed. We affirm.

Probate Code section 21350 generally prohibits donative transfers to the drafters of wills and their relatives. (All further statutory references are to the Probate Code.) However, section 21351, subdivision (i) creates an exemption from section 21350 if "[t]he transfer is made by an instrument executed by a nonresident of California who was not a resident at the time the instrument was executed, and that was not signed within California." (§…