When a prospective heir believes that others have unfairly interfered with the expected inheritance, is the proper venue to get those claims heard a civil court or probate court?

That was the issue at the core of a case recently decided by the California Court of Appeal (Halperin v Halperin).

Warren Halperin (“Warren”) established a trust in 2014, naming as beneficiaries his three children, Susan, David and Michael.

Seven years later Susan learned the terms of the trust, which in her view were more favorable to her brothers than to her.

She concluded that David and Michael would receive their shares of the trust estate outright, while her share consisted of retirement account assets that would continue to be held in trust, where not only were the distributions restricted, but she would have to pay taxes on those distributions.

According to her calculations, the fair market value of her share of the trust was about $1 million less than that of each of her brothers.

When Susan discussed this with her father, he said he would amend the trust to equalize the distributions among his three children and told her he had previously discussed this with his attorney.

In December of 2022, Susan filed a probate petition in which she made a claim of elder isolation against Michael and David. She also sought to have David removed as trustee of Warren’s trust and as his healthcare agent and financial attorney in fact.

She alleged that her brothers interfered with Warren’s efforts to amend the trust. David, she claimed, disparaged Susan’s “character and motives” to Warren and urged him to get a restraining order against her.

She also said that her brothers had accused Susan of stealing their father’s computer and had filed a false police report about the purported theft; that they deterred Warren’s friends from visiting him; that Michael threatened Susan and attempted to bribe her; and that David put Warren in an assisted living facility to limit Susan’s communication with her father.

Warren died in March of 2023, and a few week later Susan dismissed her probate petition.

In March of 2024, Susan filed a civil lawsuit in San Diego Superior Court, asserting claims against her brothers for intentional interference with an expected inheritance, intentional inflection of emotional distress, and elder financial abuse.

In his response, David argued that Susan should not be allowed to pursue her claim in civil court because the proper forum was a probate hearing. (Michael did not participate in this and later proceedings.)

The trial court agreed with David, concluding that Susan had not shown she lacked an adequate remedy in probate, so under applicable case law she could not pursue her claims at civil court.

Susan appealed the ruling.

The appellate justices noted that, as Warren’s child and beneficiary, Susan had standing to pursue her claims against her brothers in probate and had done so.

But she did not necessarily have standing to file a lawsuit based on the tort of intentional interference with an expected inheritance, they said, because such a claim “is only available when the aggrieved party has essentially been deprived of access to the probate system.”

As her probate filing demonstrated, they said, Susan clearly had such access.

Susan argued that, although she had standing to pursue her claims in probate, the remedies available to her there were inadequate. But the justices said she failed to show why that was true.

The justices affirmed the ruling of the lower court and awarded David his costs on appeal.

This is a cautionary tale of what can happen when a litigant (or his or her attorney) dismisses their case without a clear strategy. If a litigant dismisses their case hoping that another court will be friendlier, chances are the second court will say that the parties’ disputes should have been resolved in the first case.

By Lynda I. Chung