Left Out Of Will, Salvation Army Goes To Court Longtime Donor Changed Will A Week Before Her Death

The Spokane Salvation Army fears it unfairly lost a woman’s estate after she made a death-bed revision to her will that left the charity with nothing.

Early last year, Lucretia Hunt, an elderly Spokane woman, wrote a will that gave almost her entire estate to the Salvation Army and the homeless.

But just a week before her Aug. 28 death, Hunt signed a new will that excluded the Salvation Army and the city’s poor.

Instead, the bulk of her estate went to the Valley couple that cared for her during her brief illness with lung cancer.

The Salvation Army is contesting the last will in Spokane County Superior Court, questioning whether the woman was in good enough health to know what she was doing.

A friend described Hunt as a tiny single woman with a blunt demeanor and almost no living family members. Court records do not indicate how much Hunt’s estate is worth. Among her assets was a South Hill condominium.

“She’d been a generous donor to us for quite some time,” said Maj. David Bowler, director of the Spokane Salvation Army.

Hunt said as many as five people a year will their estates to the organization. He said the Army contested Hunt’s will to make certain medical evidence indicates she was mentally competent when she changed it, giving most of her estate to Christine and Robert Ouellette.

In the court filing, the Salvation Army also asserts that Hunt told a friend within a week of her death that she was “happy her estate was in order and that she had left something to the Salvation Army.”

Efforts to reach the Ouellettes and their attorney were unsuccessful.

But Susan Retan, a friend of Hunt’s, said she believes Hunt was thinking clearly right up to her death.

Retan visited Hunt just 15 minutes before she died, she said.

“She knew exactly who she was talking to,” Retan said, recalling that Hunt kidded her about her marital status. “She was sharp until she died.”

Retan said she didn’t know the Ouellettes, but has heard from another friend of Hunt’s that the elderly woman was extremely fond of the couple.

But Retan also said it sounded plausible that Hunt would have planned to leave her estate to the Salvation Army, as was stated in the Jan. 6 will. “Yeah,” she said. “That makes sense.”

Retan said she had no idea how much money Hunt had, but said if she had much it didn’t show.

In both of Hunt’s last two wills she set aside a $10,000 trust fund for Retan’s daughter.

A court hearing on the contested will is scheduled for Feb. 29.

, DataTimes