Fourth District, Division 1 Finds Appeal Premature in Lots of Respects.
In Reedy v. Bussell, Case No. D054569 (4th Dist., Div. 1 Jan. 6, 2010) (unpublished), trustee won an interlocutory judgment quieting title and ordering a partition by sale of a 131-acre ranch as against a trust beneficiary. The lower court awarded attorney’s fees in the partition action on an interim basis, but after a final judgment was entered as allowable by law. Beneficiary, feeling aggrieved, appealed.
Judgment was affirmed, but on fairly technical bases.
First, beneficiary argued that a spendthrift provision in the trust prohibited creditors from enforcing any judgment against his interest in the trust. In a nice discussion of spendthrift trust provisions, the Court of Appeal found that it did not apply because this provision terminated so that this restriction was not in force—after all, the pertinent trust did terminate by its terms. Once a trust is terminated and trust corpus is distributed, a spendthrift provision has no application. Here, the trust terminated, so that the spendthrift provision terminated as well. (While a trust is in existence, a spendthrift provision only allows enforcement of certain creditor claims—child support and in other cases only 25% of the amount payable to the beneficiary after deducting support amounts. See Prob. Code, §§ 15305, 15306, 15306.5(b)-(c).)
Second, beneficiary argued that the court erred in awarding fees in the interlocutory judgment. The problem here was that the challenge was premature, because the order only indicated fees were warranted as “allowed by law,” which meant the contention could be raised later following entry of a final judgment in the matter.