## Facts

- In 1959, Samuel Donner and his first wife, Beatrice Rosalie Donner, executed a written separation agreement requiring Samuel to leave one-third of his net estate to Beatrice and one-third to their son, Edward Donner.
- The agreement was signed but not witnessed, later raising an objection under Florida statutory requirements for contracts to make a will.
- Samuel and Beatrice divorced in Alabama; the divorce decree incorporated the separation agreement by reference (without merging it) and required compliance.
- The Alabama judgment was later domesticated in Florida in support-enforcement proceedings, and Florida courts enforced obligations arising from the decree.
- In later New York litigation, Samuel attacked the agreement’s validity; the New York court rejected the attack, treating the Alabama and Florida determinations as binding under full faith and credit.
- Samuel remarried (including to Ruth Jean Donner and later Larna Katz Donner) and executed a will that favored later spouses but did not provide the one-third bequests to Beatrice and Edward.
- After Samuel’s death, Beatrice sought specific performance in Florida against the estate to enforce the promised testamentary transfers; the later spouses and estate representatives opposed.
- The trial court granted summary judgment ordering specific performance and recognizing Beatrice and Edward as each entitled to a one-third share of the net estate.

## Issues

1. Whether Florida may specifically enforce, against a decedent’s estate, a separation agreement (incorporated into a foreign divorce decree) obligating testamentary dispositions, notwithstanding the agreement’s lack of subscribing witnesses under Florida law.
2. Whether full faith and credit and res judicata bar the estate and later spouses from challenging the validity or enforceability of the will-making obligation after the promisor’s death.

## Decision

- The appellate court affirmed the summary judgment granting specific performance for Beatrice and Edward.
- The court held the separation agreement’s will-making provision enforceable against the estate.
- The court concluded the estate and later spouses were precluded, by full faith and credit and res judicata, from re-litigating the agreement’s validity, including objections based on Florida formalities.
- Beatrice and Edward were each entitled to one-third of the decedent’s net estate.

## Legal Principles

- A contractual obligation to make specified testamentary dispositions may be enforced by specific performance against the promisor’s estate when the obligation has been judicially established and is sufficiently definite.
- A foreign divorce decree incorporating a separation agreement is entitled to full faith and credit in Florida as to matters adjudicated and ordered.
- Res judicata and collateral estoppel can bar later challenges to the validity and enforceability of a separation agreement’s testamentary obligations, even if performance is due at death, where those obligations have already been litigated and determined.
- Florida statutory formalities for contracts to make a will cannot be used to defeat obligations already conclusively established by prior judgments entitled to recognition and preclusive effect.

## Conclusion

The court enforced the separation agreement’s promise to devise estate shares by giving preclusive effect to prior out-of-state and Florida proceedings, and it affirmed specific performance requiring the estate to distribute one-third of the net estate to the first wife and one-third to the parties’ son.


Donner v. Donner, 302 So. 2d 452 (Fla. Dist. Ct. App. 1974)