## Facts

- Walter Jones executed a will containing eleven separately numbered specific devises and one residuary devise.
- One devise provided that Karen Hall would receive the “equitable interest and income” connected to Jones’s former residence in Lake of the Woods, Virginia.
- Shortly before executing the will, Jones had already sold the Virginia house and, as part of the transaction, received a deed of trust from the buyer.
- Under the deed of trust, Jones expected to receive a total of $42,000 in 120 equal monthly installments; these payments represented the “equitable interest and income” referenced in the will provision benefitting Hall.
- Approximately five months after Jones executed the will, the buyer prepaid the entire remaining balance due under the deed of trust.
- Jones deposited the $42,000 into a money-market account and did not revise, revoke, or republish his will after the prepayment and reinvestment.
- After Jones died, Hall claimed the gift remained effective because it should be treated as a demonstrative devise (or otherwise satisfied from estate assets) and argued that evidence of Jones’s testamentary intent should be received to determine whether the gift failed.
- The probate court refused to admit extrinsic evidence of Jones’s intent, treated Hall’s gift as a specific devise, and held that the gift was adeemed because the deed of trust (and its installment stream) no longer existed at Jones’s death.
- Hall appealed.

## Issues

1. Whether the will provision granting Hall the “equitable interest and income” from the former Virginia home should be treated as a specific devise subject to ademption or as a demonstrative (or other non-specific) gift that could be satisfied from general estate assets.
2. Whether, when the asset connected to a devise is prepaid and converted into readily identifiable proceeds and no statute conclusively governs, the court must consider extrinsic evidence of the testator’s intent before finding ademption by extinction.

## Decision

- The Second District Court of Appeal reversed the probate court’s ademption ruling and remanded for further proceedings.
- The court held that ademption was not a purely mechanical result of the deed of trust’s disappearance where the value was converted into traceable proceeds and the governing statute did not dictate the outcome.
- The court ruled that the probate court erred by excluding evidence of Jones’s testamentary intent, and directed that such evidence be considered on remand in determining whether Hall should receive the substituted property or its value.

## Legal Principles

- A specific devise is generally adeemed if the specifically described property is not part of the estate at death, but Florida law does not always treat ademption as automatic when the property has merely changed form.
- Where Florida’s statutory ademption provisions (including Fla. Stat. § 732.606) do not resolve the fact pattern, Florida courts may receive extrinsic evidence bearing on the testator’s intent to decide whether a devise fails.
- Conversion of the subject matter of a devise into readily identifiable proceeds (such as cash deposited into an account) can support a finding that the devise continues, depending on what the testator intended.
- A probate court commits reversible error by refusing intent evidence when the ademption question turns on whether the testator meant the beneficiary to take substituted or traceable property rather than only the original form of the asset.

## Conclusion

In Hall v. Jones (In re Estate of Jones), the appellate court rejected an automatic ademption result based solely on the prepayment of a deed of trust and reinvestment of the proceeds, and required the probate court to consider extrinsic evidence of Walter Jones’s intent to determine whether Karen Hall was entitled to the traceable substitute for the devised payment stream.


Hall v. Jones (In re Estate of Jones), 472 So. 2d 1299 (1985)