1DCA Division 4 Oral Argument - 2025/10/7 - Oct 07, 2025

argument

1DCA Division 4 Oral Argument - 2025/10/7

California First District Court of Appeal 1h 42m 8 chapters transcribed 6 days ago official recording ↗

▲ 0

Transcript

jump: chapters · find in transcript

Transcript

Transcript generated automatically by AI and may contain errors.

What are the key issues in the Holden Bodman vs Krauss probate dispute?

Unknown 0:02

Yeah, for your

Unknown 0:16

Good morning and everyone please be seated. So let's begin this morning with the first line on the calendar, which is uh Holden Bodman versus Krauss. Can I get appearances from both council, please?

David Kay 0:33

Your Honor David Kay uh on behalf of Thomas Krause.

Phil Yeager 0:37

Good morning, Your Honor. It's Phil Yeager on behalf of Heather Holden Bodeman.

Unknown 0:41

Uh and why don't you remain at the podium, Mr. K, and begin by telling us if you would, how much, if any, of your fifteen minutes you'd like to reserve for rebuttal.

David Kay 0:52

Five minutes, Your Honor.

Unknown 0:53

Okay, you may proceed.

David Kay 0:56

I would like to make three points. First. Under California law. Person making a will has very broad authority. to appoint anyone he or she wants to be executor of the wealth. Second. A court cannot disqualify the proposed executor because the person the testator suggested has friction with one of the beneficiaries. Or does not seem to be a person. who has the right personality to be an executor. Finally. In our case, Thomas was his father's choice, and To be co executor. And he was rejected by the trial court. Because he had a lot of friction with Heather. Even though he was certainly qualified in every other respect to be the executor of Daniel's estate.

Unknown 1:45

But wasn't wasn't he disqualified not just because of friction, but because the court found that he mismanaged the estate, specifically with the business?

David Kay 1:56

That's the second uh trial court, Your Honor, uh made made that. assumption I guess, with no evidence really, because he was never in charge of managing the estate. The reason that he wasn't in charge of manning the state was because Heather, the widow. had convinced the insurance companies That she was in charge of the business. And because of that uh the insurance companies would not talk at all. Thomas. Now what Thomas was doing was assisting his sister Andrea. who was specifically charged by the will, the holographic will. With running the business. And that was an important thing because Uh Andrea was a licensed uh insurance agent. And of course, Thomas had a lot of experience in financial matters and had worked with the insurance business extensively.

David Kay 2:57

So well

Unknown 2:58

he hadn't been appointed as an administrator, but all of his actions, didn't it do didn't all of his actions seem to indicate that he was acting under the authority of Andrea? And yes, running. He was trying

David Kay 3:11

he was he was trying to gather information specifically, and that's where the main friction happened because he went at Heather's invitation to the family home. To gather information and he found out all kinds of bad things. Number one, they had destroyed uh a lot of the information by destroying the seedent's phone. uh the the files were there. But uh I I think the main thing that bothered Heather was that she thought that she was going to be in charge of this estate because of unsigned documents that uh frankly Uh the decedent didn't sign and probably ne would never have signed, did not want to sign. And this holographic will, which was a secret From everyone was hidden in his desk. And I think that was purposeful because he didn't want to get into a uh an argument with this with the widow about not executing these other documents.

David Kay 4:13

But nonetheless, the widow felt like those documents should rule. And so she acted like she was in charge of the estate. She didn't allow it

Unknown 4:24

didn't Thomas by the same token act like he was? The administrator. In other words, you know, he he's sending these Emails that are rather peremptory in their tone and I can't remember the exact titles that he bestowed upon himself, but you know, chief operating officer or whatever. Yes. Um, he certainly seemed to be acting as though he had he he had arrogated to himself the authority to act on behalf of the insurance business.

David Kay 4:58

Well, on behalf of Andrea, who was the person who was stated in the will to be the person doing it. And the types of things he was trying to do there by these titles and all these other things, was gather information so that he could help run the business. But all that was completely foreclosed because when uh when uh Heather convinced the insurance companies that she was in charge