Should Both Widows Get Lottery Windfall? Washington High Court To Take Case Of Dead Man With 2 Wives
The Washington Supreme Court today kept alive a dispute over whether both widows of a lottery winner should share in the millions he left behind.
The high court, in a unanimous ruling, also said Washington has jurisdiction over the case involving a Houston, Texas, woman and a Vancouver, Wash., woman.
Elmer Sessions won nearly $2.6 million in the Arizona lottery in 1989 when he and his third wife, Barbara, were living temporarily in Tucson. The lottery payout is nearly $98,000 a year for 20 years.
Sessions died two years after winning the jackpot, and his wife began collecting the annual checks. Sessions’ first wife, Rosalie, filed a claim for a share, saying her husband had abandoned her 40 years ago but that they were never divorced. There had been no contact between the couple since 1957.
The state Supreme Court was asked to decide which state should resolve the dispute, since the two states have different laws dealing with community property and whether abandonment effectively ends the marriage.
Under Texas law, a couple’s community property continues to build until divorce or death, and a spouse who has been abandoned can claim up to one-quarter of an estate. In Washington, community property stops being accumulated when a married couple separates, though not necessarily divorces.
Sessions married his first wife in Texas in 1941. Around 1955, he abandoned her. About 10 years ago, their daughter, Bonnie Seizer, became her mother’s legal guardian because of Rosalie Sessions’ mental illness, which began in 1954. In 1992, Bonnie Seizer filed a lawsuit in Clark County, Wash., seeking her mother’s share of the estate.
A second wife, divorced after a long common law marriage, is not party to the suit.
Last year, the State Court of Appeals ruled that the law in Texas should determine how Sessions’ assets are split.
“Washington has no interest in allowing deserting spouses from other states to seek refuge under Washington’s … statute,” the court said.
The high court overturned the appeals court, saying Washington law should apply. When spouses live in different states, “We will determine the character of the property by the law of the state in which the spouse who acquired the property was domiciled at the time of acquisition,” Justice Charles Johnson, wrote.
Typically, Washington courts will follow the rule that “When there is no ‘community’ (as in a defunct marriages), there can be no community property,” Johnson said.
But the court said that in this and all subsequent cases, the state will require a showing of “some conduct on the part of both spouses” to indicate that the marriage is over.
In this case, all of the action was on the man’s part, the court said.
“Elmer moved away, established a common law (second) marriage, divorced and then married Barbara,” Johnson wrote. “Rosalie, on the other hand, has been mentally ill and was declared incompetent.