In re a Trust Created by Von Gontard
Opinion of the Court
Order, Supreme Court, New York County (Stanley Sklar, J.), entered June 6, 2000, which, inter alia, denied the application of trustee Bank of New York, in settling its final account, to reform the grantor retained income trust (GRIT) indenture, created in a prior guardianship proceeding to manage the securities of grantor Hildegard von Gontard, an incapacitated person under Mental Hygiene Law §81.02 (b), unanimously affirmed, with costs.
The trustee of the subject GRIT has applied to reform the trust indenture upon its purportedly recent discovery that the six-year-old indenture does not accurately reflect the dispositional intent of the incapacitated grantor as reflected in her will and revocable trust. However, the trustee’s showing in support of its application provides no basis upon which to conclude that there is any conflict between the GRIT and the previously executed dispositional instruments. The prior instruments upon which the trustee relies are not included in the record, but, to the extent that it would be proper to rely on their description by counsel for the trustee, they merely indicate that the grantor did not wish those nieces and nephews of her late husband adopted or born out of wedlock to benefit from her estate. There is no indication that this purported direction had any practical significance since, to the extent ascertainable from the record, none of the nieces and nephews of the grantor’s late husband had, in fact, been adopted or born out of wedlock, and while some of the issue of the nieces and nephews in question were either adopted or born out of wedlock, the record affords no reason to suppose
Case-law data current through December 31, 2025. Source: CourtListener bulk data.