Q: Barefoot vs Jennings. What is this proving?

A: The case relates to who is allowed to bring a claim in Probate Court to challenge the validity of a trust or trust amendment.

As a quick background, the law only allows certain people to sue for certain things. For example, If a lady loans her lawnmower to her neighbor and the neighbor refuses to return it, the woman’s brother, who is ticked off someone took advantage of his sister, cannot sue the neighbor because the lawnmower taken did not belong to the brother. So, according to the law, the brother has not suffered damage. The same is true if ten people are in an intersection and see a horrific car accident. All ten may be traumatized from what they saw, but the only people allowed to sue to receive compensation for that trauma are immediate family members. Otherwise, people would be able to sue for every unfortunate and sad thing that happens in life. (Putting aside all the people who are offended by having to hear someone’s point of view that is different from their own... I’m sure many of those people would sue if they were allowed to do so. Thankfully, they aren’t.)

The whole area of law surrounding who can sue for what is called “standing.” When a judge addresses a standing issue, the judge is trying to determine if a particular person who sued has (or doesn’t have) the right to “stand” up in court.

The Barefoot case was all about whether a daughter who had been disinherited by her mother in a 16th amendment to the mother’s trust was able to sue to challenge amendments 16-24 based on her mother’s incompetence, undue influence, or fraud. Normally, if a person lacks sufficient mental competence, such as someone with advanced Alzheimer’s, any document that person signs can be legally excluded from a trust because the person didn’t understand what she was signing at the time she signed it.

In the Barefoot case, the Supreme Court determined that the daughter DID have the right to sue over her mother’s trust amendments even though, when all was said and done preparing the mother’s trust, the daughter had been disinherited. In short, the Probate Code grants standing to individuals who claim trust amendments eliminating their beneficiary status arose from incompetence, undue influence, or fraud.

Hope that helps!