Background
After Douglas G. Todd died in January 2025, his son and personal representative, Chadd B. Todd, applied for informal probate of a will Douglas executed in 1984. Judy Sheets objected and sought probate of a two-page handwritten document from February 2021 that she contended superseded the earlier will and left Douglas’ estate to her.
Sheets testified that Douglas signed and dated the 2021 document and told her what to write, but she acknowledged that she had handwritten the rest of it. On competing summary judgment motions, the county court ruled for Chadd, concluding that the document was not a valid holographic will because its material provisions were not in Douglas’ handwriting and, alternatively, because it lacked testamentary intent. Sheets appealed.
The Court’s Holding
The Nebraska Supreme Court affirmed the summary judgment. Under Neb. Rev. Stat. § 30-2328, an unwitnessed instrument is valid as a holographic will only if its signature, material provisions, and, subject to limited exceptions, an indication of its signing date are in the testator’s handwriting. Because Sheets wrote the material provisions, the document did not satisfy that requirement as Douglas’ holographic will.
The court rejected Sheets’ argument that her handwriting was sufficient because the document was a joint will and she was one of its testators. A joint will embodies the separate will of each maker, and only Douglas could be the testator of the will offered for probate in his estate proceeding. The court therefore held that a purported joint will whose material provisions are handwritten by one party is not a valid holographic will of the other party, even if that other party signed it. Because that issue resolved the appeal, the court did not address the county court’s alternative ruling concerning testamentary intent.
Key Takeaways
- A joint will is treated as the separate will of each person who executes the shared instrument.
- For a document to qualify as Douglas’ holographic will, its material provisions had to be in Douglas’ own handwriting.
- A person’s signature on material provisions handwritten by another joint maker does not satisfy Nebraska’s holographic-will statute.
Why It Matters
The decision clarifies that Nebraska’s handwriting requirement applies separately to each maker of a purported joint holographic will. One party cannot supply the statutorily required handwriting for another party’s will merely because both intended to use the same document.
The court also emphasized the anti-fraud function of the requirement: insisting that the testator personally write the material provisions helps authenticate the document as an expression of that testator’s wishes.