- 14 - 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 hePage: Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 Next
Last modified: May 25, 2011