{"id":2103,"date":"2014-12-03T13:49:51","date_gmt":"2014-12-03T13:49:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bresky-merger.local.com\/posts\/law-offices-of-robin-bresky-obtains-affirmance-of-order-ruling-that-obligation-in-property-settlement-agreement-did-not-apply-to-non-probate-assets\/"},"modified":"2014-12-03T13:49:51","modified_gmt":"2014-12-03T13:49:51","slug":"law-offices-of-robin-bresky-obtains-affirmance-of-order-ruling-that-obligation-in-property-settlement-agreement-did-not-apply-to-non-probate-assets","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ssrga.com\/appellate\/law-offices-of-robin-bresky-obtains-affirmance-of-order-ruling-that-obligation-in-property-settlement-agreement-did-not-apply-to-non-probate-assets\/","title":{"rendered":"Bresky Law Obtains Affirmance of Order Ruling that Obligation in Property Settlement Agreement Did Not Apply to Non-Probate Assets"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><code><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/y3IA-7P_DpM?rel=0\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/code><\/p>\n<p>Bresky Law, with appellate co-counsel and trial counsel Amy Beller, recently obtained a per curiam affirmance of a trial court order in our client\u2019s favor in a dispute over the interpretation of language in a property settlement agreement (\u201cAgreement\u201d). The Decedent entered into the Agreement as part of the dissolution of his marriage. In the Agreement, the Decedent agreed to leave fifty percent of his estate by will to the Appellants. The Agreement also stated: \u201cExcept as provided in this agreement, each party may dispose of his or her property in any way.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The Decedent\u2019s Will left 50% of his probate estate to the Appellants in compliance with the Agreement. However, a significant amount of assets passed outside of probate to the Appellees at the Decedent\u2019s death. The Appellants sued, arguing that the Agreement\u2019s language required the Decedent to leave one-half of all of his property to them. The trial court found that the Agreement was unambiguous and applied only to assets that passed by Decedent\u2019s Will, and an appeal ensued.<\/p>\n<p>On appeal, we argued that the Appellants\u2019 construction of the Agreement was contrary to the Agreement\u2019s plain language and would require the insertion of additional language into the Agreement that was not there. We pointed out that the Agreement imposed no contractual obligation on the Decedent to arrange for one-half of his non-probate assets to pass into his probate estate in the way Appellants contended. The Agreement\u2019s use of the term \u201cby Will\u201d limited the scope of the Decedent\u2019s obligation to assets that passed under the Decedent\u2019s will. Thus, the words \u201cby Will\u201d in this context required a finding that \u201cestate\u201d means \u201cprobate estate.\u201d We also argued that, as to certain non-probate assets, the Appellants\u2019 position conflicted with Florida case law holding that, absent specific language to the contrary in a property settlement agreement, the beneficiary designation in the other document (such as an IRA) controls.<\/p>\n<p>The Fourth DCA issued a per curiam affirmance of the trial court\u2019s decision. This ruling from the appellate court preserves the positive result our client obtained in the probate court.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Bresky Law, with appellate co-counsel and trial counsel Amy Beller, recently obtained a per curiam affirmance of a trial court order in our client\u2019s favor in a dispute over the interpretation of language in a property settlement agreement (\u201cAgreement\u201d). The Decedent entered into the Agreement as part of the dissolution of his marriage. In the&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1811,1807,1806,1838,1813],"tags":[1844],"class_list":["post-2103","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-4th-dca-rulings","category-bresky-appellate-cases","category-family","category-notable-cases","category-probate","tag-trust-estate"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ssrga.com\/appellate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2103","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ssrga.com\/appellate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ssrga.com\/appellate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ssrga.com\/appellate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ssrga.com\/appellate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2103"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/ssrga.com\/appellate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2103\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ssrga.com\/appellate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2103"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ssrga.com\/appellate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2103"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ssrga.com\/appellate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2103"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}