Succession of Peggy Blackwell Bruce
Annotate this CaseThe testator herein executed a notarial testament in 2016, naming her niece as her sole legatee. After the testator’s death in 2018, her widower challenged the testament, contending inter alia that it was rendered invalid by the failure to state in the attestation clause that the testator declared she had signed “at the end” of the testament. The issue this case presented was whether the language of an attestation clause in the 2016 notarial testament, which failed to expressly state that the testator declared or signified that she signed the testament “at the end,” even though it stated the testator signed “on each page,” violated the requirements of La. C.C. art. 1577 and rendered the testament absolutely null under La. C.C. art. 1573. The district court invalidated the testament, finding “the only deviation from La.Civ.Code art. 1577(2) was the absence of the words ‘at the end’ in the attestation clause.” The Louisiana Supreme Court found the attestation clause in this case made use of the exact language set forth in the sample attestation clause in the pre-1980 version of former La. R.S. 9:2442; i.e., that the will was “[s]igned on each page” (as noted, when changed in 1980 to its current wording, the difference was denominated by its authors as a technical and/or semantic change). The question for the Supreme Court reduced to whether such a semantic departure from Article 1577’s current language could be considered substantially similar to the requisite attestation ‒ that the testator “signed at the end and on each other separate page.” The Court recognized that these phrases had slightly different connotations, as once the testator signs “at the end” of the testamentary recitations he was not required to sign after the attestation clause even if it concluded on a subsequent page; the testator was only required to sign on each of the other separate pages that precede his signature at the end of the testamentary recitations. Here, the declaration the testator signed "on each page" of a testament necessarily established that the testament had been signed on every page, including the page containing the end of the testament. The appellate and district court decisions were reversed, and the matter remanded for further proceedings.
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