Iowa Resources

 

 

We have written detailed reviews of Iowa law impacting agricultural producers and landowners. Access these reviews by clicking on the tiles below. You can also review Iowa cases on a particular subject by searching our list of Iowa case law reviews at the bottom of this page.

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A mother died owning Iowa farmland and her will appointed her youngest son as executor.  Her will also gave the executor the right to purchase farmland from the estate for its value for Iowa Inheritance Tax purposes (interest rate was set at rate equal to rate charged by Farm Credit Services on real estate mortgages in the county). The executor and the estate’s attorney chose an appraiser for the property. The appraiser was informed that the appraisal was for estate and inheritance tax purposes, but did not know that the executor had the chance to purchase the property.

January 10, 2010 | Erin Herbold

A challenge to the validity of a will often comes in the form of a concerned party accusing another party of imposing their will on the testator.  Typically, such scenarios arise when the one party has a close relationship with or a position of authority over the testator.  Here, the parents had three children- one son and two daughters. The mother was estranged from one of the daughters as a result of a “physical altercation.”  When the other daughter passed away, the remaining daughter reconnected with her mother.

January 20, 2010 | Erin Herbold

In this case, the trial court dismissed an executor’s claims that the decedent’s daughter had committed constructive fraud by abusing a confidential relationship and exerting undue influence over her father.  The daughter helped her parents as they aged by managing their finances and helping them with errands. In July 2001, the mother transferred money to her daughter to pay her parent’s expenses. The mother died in September 2001, and the father executed a new power of attorney, naming his daughter as agent. 

Here, a father died with an insurance policy benefitting his second wife. The father’s two sons brought suit against his estate claiming asking that the change of beneficiary designation on his life insurance policy to their step-mother be set aside because of undue influence.  The father had been married to the sons’ mother for 49 years until her death in 2002.  After she died, the father experienced health problems, including blindness and heart problems.  He then married a former high school classmate who took over his daily care and was his companion. 

January 20, 2010 | Erin Herbold

A son challenged his disqualification as a nominated executor of his mother’s estate.  The mother passed away in Feb. 2009 appointing her son as the executor. However, before she died, the son’s relationship with his mother and his siblings was strained to the point that he did not even attend her funeral.

Long-term health care planning often involves the use of trusts to provide a stream of income for a family member in need of long-term care and preserve trust assets for other family members upon the death of the person in need of care.  This case involved a determination as to  whether a particular trust was a "discretionary trust with standards" and, if so, what effect Iowa Code section 633A.4702 (2007) had on the Iowa Department of Human Services' (DHS's) right to recover Medicaid benefits from the corpus of that trust after the beneficiary’s death.  

Here, the lawsuits (10 in all) began with a struggle among family members concerning the administration of their mother’s estate and their father’s estate plan. In 2001, the trial court ordered the children to cease interfering with the disposition of their parents’ property.  Any party that violated the court’s order would forfeit their right to receive any property under their father’s will. 

March 1, 2010 | Erin Herbold

When drafting estate planning documents for clients, an attorney is only liable for malpractice to the client, not potential beneficiaries or heirs.

It is a common estate planning tool for a revocable trust to be accompanied with a pour-over will to ensure that all of the decedent’s property ends up in the trust at death. Here, a mother executed a revocable living trust and transferred some of her assets to the trust during her life. She died in 2006, owning an 80-acre parcel of farmland and survived by three grown daughters - two living out of state.  The Iowa daughter was named trustee.  The 80 acres was never transferred to the trust, but Mom’s will devised the residuary of her estate to the trust. 

In this divorce dispute, the wife claimed that the trial court should have divided her husband’s retirement account equally between them. Here, the parties were married for nearly twenty-two years. The case proceeded to a trial on financial issues because the husband’s retirement account had been liquidated prior to trial and the proceeds were used to pay outstanding bills of the marriage. However, neither party had “clean hands” in the financial arrangements of the marriage.

In cases involving interpretation of a provision in a will, the testator’s intent controls.  In this case, the executors of a will sought the court’s interpretation of a will provision.  The provision specifically bequeathed to the decedent’s husband, should he survive her, household items, such as furniture and cars. The provision provided as follows:

Guardianships and conservatorships are court-ordered legal devices used to protect a person’s personal and financial well-being in the event that they are unable to do so. Typically, these court-supervised arrangements end upon the death of the person they are designed to protect or when the court deems they are no longer necessary.  

In this case, a father died owning nearly 400 acres of Iowa farmland. The father’s will bequeathed most of his property to his children (each child inherited a separate parcel) and the “homeplace” went to the grandchildren.  Before he died, the father leased the farmland to his son. The lease specified that upon termination, the tenant would relinquish possession of the farmland. If the tenant failed to relinquish the land, he would owe $150 per day to the landlord as liquidated damages. The lease specified that it terminated upon the father’s death.

April 24, 2010 | Erin Herbold

A fundamental point of estate planning, especially in families with both on-farm and off-farm heirs, is that “fair” doesn’t necessarily mean “equal.”  Here, the Iowa courts were asked to determine the value of shares distributed from a trust and whether those shares should be valued at the time of the grantor’s death or at the time of the distribution of the assets. 

May 27, 2010 | Erin Herbold

In this case, the parties' father died and his estate property passed to the parties' mother.  She subsequently died in 2006 with a will providing that her property would be divided equally among her four surviving children and the heirs of a predeceased child.  

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