A person drafting his or her estate plan has the right to dispose of their worldly possessions as they see fit. But what happens if the person’s family believes the decedent was not well and was unfairly influenced by someone on whom they were dependent?
That was the issue in a case recently decided by the California Court of Appeal (Hamlin v Jendayi).
The case was initiated after Dr. Laura Dean Head, a much-admired professor of Black Studies at San Francisco State University for more than 35 years, died in June of 2013. She was survived by her sisters, Della Hamlin and Helaine Head who brought the lawsuit against Dr. Head's former student and end-of-life caregiver, Zakiya Jendayi.
In April of 2013, Dr. Head failed to appear for work and police performed a welfare check at the request of her employer. Police officers found her living in an “uninhabitable” house infested with possums, lying in a room “hoarded…floor to ceiling.” The officers said she was emaciated and unable to walk or state the date.
Dr. Head was admitted to the hospital and diagnosed with stomach cancer, kidney failure, alcoholic cirrhosis, anemia, severe malnutrition and other disorders. She had lost eight pounds in the prior month and 70 pounds in the past two years, and had not eaten or had any liquids in almost a week.
Dr. Head’s medical records listed her sister, Della Hamlin, as her sole emergency contact and holder of a durable power of attorney for her. However, in the hospital Dr. Head told a social worker that she was “estranged from her two sisters.”
While still in the hospital, Dr. Head signed a power of attorney and an advanced healthcare directive naming Jendayi as her primary agent. These documents were signed in the presence of Jendayi.
After her hospitalization, Dr. Head was placed on hospice care at Jendayi's home. The same day Dr. Head moved in, Jendayi transferred the title of Dr. Head’s vehicle to herself and added her name to Dr. Head’s bank account.
Shortly thereafter, Jendayi contacted an attorney, Elaine Lee, purportedly at the request and direction of Dr. Head, to draft estate planning documents. However, when Jendayi completed the client intake form and fee agreement she listed herself, not Dr. Head, as Lee's client.
Lee prepared a draft trust document that named Jendayi as the sole beneficiary and left nothing to Dr. Head's sisters, meaning after her death, Dr. Head's entire estate – including a home worth $750,000 – would go to Jendayi and her sisters would get nothing. Lee would later testify that she spoke directly to Dr. Head about her intentions, that she believed Dr. Head was acting of her own free will, and “nothing seemed suspicious” about the relationship between Dr. Head and Jendayi but Dr. Head did not execute the trust in Lee's presence.
Before the trust document was executed, Dr. Head was again hospitalized with significant health problems and in an altered mental stated. Despite Dr. Head's worsening medical condition, Jendayi alleged she asked her to bring the trust to the hospital so she could sign it. The trust was executed by Dr. Head in her hospital room at 10:30 p.m., witnessed only by a friend of Jendayi’s who was a notary, and two of Jendayi’s neighbors.
Dr. Head died two weeks later on June 19, 2013 at the age of 64 without a spouse, parents or children. The trust procured by Jendayi was the only estate planning document Dr. Head had executed.
In March of 2020, Jendayi asked the Alameda County Probate Court to give her certain property left to Dr. Head in her late mother’s estate, claiming that it passed to her through the terms of Dr. Head’s trust.
In May of 2020, Della Hamlin and Helaine Hunt, filed a petition to invalidate the trust signed by their sister in 2013, on the grounds of undue influence, lack of capacity, and/or forgery. They acknowledged they didn’t have standing as trustees or beneficiaries of the trust but relied on other legal theories including financial elder abuse and invalidation.
During trial, Jendayi asserted that the trust was valid and Dr. Head made her sole beneficiary based on the “intimate and personal,” “special,” “physical,” and “sacred” relationship they shared. When asked to elaborate further on the nature of her relationship with Dr. Head, Jendayi refused.
The court ultimately determined that the trust was “presumptively the product of Jendayi’s undue influence,” and that Jendayi had failed to disprove that presumption.
The court found Dr. Head was “vulnerable” and “completely dependent” on Jendayi based on Jendayi's position as Dr. Head’s power of attorney and end-of-life caregiver. The court further found that Jendayi used affection to unduly influence Dr. Head.
Because the trust left Dr. Head's home, along with a right to property from Dr. Head's mother's estate solely to Jendayi, the court found this result “inequitable because the evidence shows that [Jendayi] was a former student and friend who, at best, cared for [Dr. Head] for the last two months of her life.”
The probate court invalidated the trust and ordered its assets transferred to a special administrator.
Jendayi appealed.
The appellate court first addressed Hamlin and Helaine's standing to sue given they were not trustees or named beneficiaries of the trust. The court held that because the sisters were the intestate heirs of Dr. Head, they had an interest in her estate and in invalidating the trust that disinherited them.
Next, the court determined that Jendayi and Dr. Head had a “confidential relationship,” meaning one where “trust and confidence is reposed by one person in the integrity and fidelity of another.” Dr. Head, they pointed out, was “unable to properly care for herself” and was “extremely vulnerable and dependent on Jendayi … at the time the Trust was executed.”
Jendayi argued that their relationship was merely one of friendship and affection, but the justices pointed out that she acted as Dr. Head’s attorney-in-fact, took the title to Dr. Head’s car, added herself to Dr. Head’s bank accounts, and retained Lee to draft Dr. Head’s trust.
The justices said the probate court was reasonable in finding that Jendayi’s claim of a romantic relationship with Dr. Head was not supported by the evidence, including Jendayi’s statement that she was dating someone else when Dr. Head was first hospitalized in 2013.
The justices also reasoned that the trust was “executed at an inappropriate time and place” – in Dr. Head’s hospital room when she was severely ill, before “hastily coordinated witnesses,” and that Jendayi had not explained why it was not signed weeks earlier, when Dr. Head was presumably lucid.
The appellate court affirmed the decision of the probate court.
By Jessica Stemple