## Facts

- Nancy and Luke Laubenheimer were married and had no children together.
- Nancy never adopted Luke’s children from his prior marriage (Nancy’s stepchildren).
- In 1999, Nancy executed a will leaving her entire estate to her stepchildren if Luke predeceased her.
- Luke died in 2001, and Nancy did not change her will.
- Around 2003, Joseph McLeod began living with Nancy.
- Nancy later suffered multiple strokes and, in 2008, entered a nursing home.
- Nancy’s physicians determined she lacked capacity to make health-care decisions; Nancy’s cousin, Diane Kulpa, acted as Nancy’s health-care agent under a health-care power of attorney.
- Nancy’s condition did not improve.
- McLeod twice removed Nancy from the nursing home against medical advice: first to obtain a marriage license and later to solemnize the marriage.
- McLeod did not tell Nancy’s family or doctors about the wedding.
- After learning of the marriage, Patricia Laubenheimer, one of Nancy’s stepchildren, petitioned for guardianship, alleging severe cognitive disability and financial exploitation by McLeod.
- The circuit court appointed Kulpa as Nancy’s guardian.
- After Nancy died, McLeod and Patricia filed competing petitions regarding administration of Nancy’s estate.
- McLeod asserted that Nancy’s 1999 will was invalid and that, as Nancy’s surviving spouse, he was entitled to inherit her estate.
- McLeod also argued that the marriage could not be challenged after Nancy’s death because an annulment action cannot be commenced after a spouse dies.
- Patricia responded that the 1999 will was valid and that the court could declare the marriage void based on Nancy’s mental incapacity to consent.
- The circuit court concluded the marriage could not be invalidated after Nancy’s death and granted McLeod’s probate petition; Patricia appealed.

## Issues

1. When marital status controls inheritance in an estate proceeding, may a circuit court determine after one spouse’s death that the purported marriage was void based on a statutory prohibition (including lack of capacity to consent)?
2. Does Wisconsin’s rule barring commencement of an annulment action after a spouse’s death bar all post-death challenges to a marriage’s validity?
3. May a circuit court use declaratory judgment in a probate dispute to decide whether a claimant is a “surviving spouse” because the marriage was void from the start?

## Decision

- The Wisconsin Supreme Court reversed the circuit court’s order and remanded for further proceedings.
- The court held that the statutory bar on starting an annulment action after death does not prevent a court, in an estate dispute, from determining whether the marriage was void from the start.
- The court held that annulment is not the only path to contest marital status; declaratory judgment may be used in an estate proceeding to decide whether a marriage prohibited by law was void.
- The court directed the circuit court on remand to address whether Nancy lacked legal capacity to consent to marriage and, if so, whether that made the marriage void, which would affect McLeod’s claim to inherit as a spouse.

## Legal Principles

- A void marriage and an annulable (voidable) marriage are different: a void marriage is one the law does not recognize as valid, while annulment is a statutory remedy that ends a marriage treated as valid unless and until a court grants relief.
- A statute limiting when an annulment action may be filed (including a rule that annulment cannot be commenced after death) does not, by itself, decide whether a marriage was legally valid in the first place.
- Declaratory judgment may be used to resolve legal status and rights in a live dispute, including whether an individual qualifies as a “surviving spouse” for estate administration and distribution.
- In probate litigation, courts may decide marital status questions when those questions control succession rights, including where the challenge asserts the marriage was prohibited by statute and therefore void from the beginning.

## Conclusion

In re Estate of Laubenheimer holds that, even though an annulment action cannot be started after a spouse’s death, a circuit court handling an estate dispute may still use declaratory judgment to decide whether the decedent’s marriage was void from the beginning due to a statutory prohibition such as lack of capacity to consent, and the case was remanded for fact-finding on capacity and the resulting inheritance consequences.


In re Estate of Laubenheimer, 350 Wis. 2d 182, 833 N.W.2d 735 (2013)