Remember Anna-Nicole Smith? The former playmate who married a billionaire who was a bit older than her. Did you know that she made ninety million dollars after her husband died? Even more surprising, not a dime of that was directly from her deceased husbands estate. That’s right Anna Nicole Smith brought an action for tortious interference with expectation of inheritance in a Texas Probate Court. Truly, Smith’s award is one of the largest in the history of this type of tort but this tort is becoming more and more common especially in Florida – a hot bed of inheritance and will disputes. What may surprise a reader is the relative ease at which this tort offers remedy compared to the alternatives before it came to existence.
Anna Nicole’s Story:
- She married a rich man who promised her half of his estate.
- Her husband died in 1995 leaving an estate valued at over one billion dollars.
- Smith received no inheritance because her husband’s son had conspired with one attorney and fired another and made improper changes to various trusts that were promised to Anna.
- A court ultimately found that “Pierce [the stepson] has tortuously deprived her [Smith] of her expectancy of a substantial inter vivos gift from her deceased husband J. Howard.”
Many states still have not adopted this tort and the “caveat proceeding” is their only remedy.
- Caveat proceeding is a fancy term for a will contest- something meant to halt the probate of the will so that its validity can be examined.
- Prior to torts of this kind everything was done within a probate court and all who had an interest in the will could contest it, at the expense of the estate itself mind you.
- Currently, less than half of the States in the USA recognize this tort, but many in the Southeast region including Florida and Georgia do recognize it. Infact out neighbor Georgia was the first state to recognize the tort.
What will you have to prove to establish a claim for tortious interference with inheritance?There are 5 elements that have to proven for a claim to succeed in Florida:
- The existence of an expectancy
- A reasonable certainty the expectancy would have been realized but for the inheritance
- Intentional interference
- Tortious conduct involved with that interference (the interference cant be legal)
- Damages
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