## Facts

- Clara A. Mayo and James P. Mayo, Jr. married in 1953, had no children, and divorced in 1978; Clara’s only heirs at law were her parents.
- In 1973, while married, Clara executed a will and a revocable inter vivos trust as coordinated parts of an estate plan naming James as principal beneficiary.
- Clara’s will left personal property to James and poured the residuary estate into the contemporaneously executed trust.
- The trust was revocable by Clara during life and contemplated a marital-deduction structure if James survived her, including an income interest for James.
- Clara also arranged for certain nonprobate assets (including employment-related benefits) to pass to the trust via beneficiary designations.
- After the divorce, Clara changed a life-insurance beneficiary designation to a colleague but did not amend the will, the trust, or the relevant trust-directed beneficiary designations.
- The trust was not funded during Clara’s lifetime; it was intended to receive assets at death through the will’s residuary clause and nonprobate transfers.
- Clara died in 1981 with the 1973 will and trust still in place.
- The estate administrator and Clara’s parents challenged the trust’s validity and argued that the divorce revoked James’s interests; disputes also arose over standing to litigate trust administration issues.

## Issues

1. Whether a revocable inter vivos pour-over trust is valid when unfunded during the settlor’s lifetime but identified in the will and executed contemporaneously with it.
2. Whether the divorce revocation statute, G.L. c. 191, § 9, revokes a former spouse’s beneficial interests under a revocable pour-over trust that functioned as part of a unified testamentary scheme.
3. Whether the decedent’s parents had standing to challenge aspects of the trust and its administration once the trust was held valid.

## Decision

- The Supreme Judicial Court held that the unfunded pour-over trust was valid because it was identified in the will and its terms were contained in a written instrument executed contemporaneously with the will.
- The court held that the divorce revoked James Mayo’s beneficial interests under the trust, applying G.L. c. 191, § 9 to the trust because the will and trust were integrally related components of a single estate plan funded at death.
- The court left intact the trust’s provisions benefiting other beneficiaries (including charitable and remainder beneficiaries), concluding that the divorce affected only the former spouse’s interests.
- The court concluded that the parents lacked standing to pursue certain challenges to the trust and its administration once the trust was deemed valid and they were not trust beneficiaries.

## Legal Principles

- A revocable inter vivos trust may be valid even if unfunded during the settlor’s life when a contemporaneously executed will identifies the trust and pours the residuary estate into it.
- When a will and revocable pour-over trust operate together as a death-funded estate plan, a statute revoking testamentary benefits to a former spouse upon divorce may be applied to revoke the former spouse’s trust benefits to prevent circumvention of the statute’s policy.
- Divorce revocation applies to the former spouse’s interests without automatically invalidating the remaining trust dispositions to other beneficiaries.
- Standing to challenge trust administration generally requires a present beneficial interest; potential intestate heirs lack standing when the trust is upheld and they are not beneficiaries.

## Conclusion

The court validated an unfunded pour-over trust created alongside a will and treated the coordinated instruments as a single death-focused estate plan, extending the divorce revocation statute to eliminate the former spouse’s trust benefits while preserving the trust for remaining beneficiaries and limiting challenges by nonbeneficiaries.


Clymer v. Mayo, 393 Mass. 754 (1985)