[Editor’s Note: The California Supreme Court granted review of Haggerty v. Thornton on December 22, 2021 in Case No. S271483. The Supreme Court is likely to resolve the conflict between Haggerty v. Thornton and King v. Lynch. In the meantime, per the Supreme Court’s order, the Haggerty opinion remains citable.]
The Legislature and courts
On November 20, 2019, California attorney Jeffrey T. Makoff presented to the Sacramento Estate Planning Council on the topic: “Welcome to the Post-Marriage World: How to Plan for a Generation That Says ‘I Don’t.’”
Jeff started with evidence that marriage rates have declined sharply from the Silent Generation (those born from the mid-1920s to the mid-1940s) to the Millennials (those born from about 1981 to 1996).
California’s elaborate Family Code establishes property rights between married persons, resting on the concept of “community property.” But what happens when unmarried folks start or run businesses together, or make other financial deals, during an intimate relationship? Jeff explored the complexities associated with the legal relationship between partners who are neither married nor registered domestic partners.
Can a disinherited person contest a trust amendment under California Probate Code section 17200? No, said the Court of Appeal last August in Barefoot v. Jennings (2018) 27 Cal.App.5th 1.
The Barefoot opinion put pending trust contests in jeopardy, as contestants typically have used section 17200 as the procedural hook to challenge trust amendments that disfavored them. Last week, however, the California Supreme Court granted review of Barefoot such that the opinion no longer has precedential value.