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part, that “A Successor-Trustee may be appointed by the current
Trustee or Trustees, a court of competent jurisdiction, or by
consensus with the and [sic] Beneficiaries if the First Trustee
resigns with 30 days notice.” (Emphasis added.) However, Robert
Hogue has failed to establish that the altered trust instrument
supersedes the 1994 trust instrument in which paragraph Eighth
provides, in pertinent part, that “A Successor-Trustee may be
appointed by a court of competent jurisdiction or by consensus
with the Trust Managers and Beneficiaries if the First Trustee
resigns with 30 days notice”. As it pertains to the question of
whether Robert Hogue is Residential Management’s trustee, we
conclude that the 1994 trust instrument controls our disposition
of this case.
According to the 1994 trust instrument, Residential
Management was purportedly created on May 24, 1994, and Douglas
J. Carpa was purportedly appointed “trustee”. Douglas J. Carpa
then resigned and purportedly appointed Robert Hogue successor
trustee on July 15, 1997. However, the 1994 trust instrument did
not grant Douglas J. Carpa the authority to appoint a successor
trustee. As a result, Robert Hogue would have this Court rely,
not on the 1994 trust instrument, but on the altered trust
instrument to find that Douglas J. Carpa had unilateral authority
to appoint Robert Hogue successor trustee.
In support of his contention, Robert Hogue testified that he
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