## Facts

- Viktor Kohn and his uncle, Otakar Kohn, held joint bank accounts at three New York banks.
- Viktor, his wife, and children were deported from Prague to the Lodz ghetto on October 26, 1941.
- Otakar was sent to the Terezin camp in 1942 and was later recorded as transferred “to the east” on October 22, 1942; Viktor’s brother Oskar was similarly transferred “to the east” on August 20, 1942.
- Czechoslovak court decrees (issued under wartime missing-person procedures) fixed presumed dates of death, including April 22, 1943 for Otakar and October 26, 1943 for Viktor.
- An expert testified about Czechoslovak presumption-of-death methods and about Nazi deportation records, including that “to the east” from Terezin commonly indicated transfer to extermination sites where death typically occurred shortly after arrival.
- Antonie Mautner, administratrix of Viktor’s estate, sought an order requiring the banks to pay the joint-account funds to Viktor’s estate on the theory that Otakar died first.
- The banks resisted payment, arguing the proof was insufficient to establish the order of deaths required to apply survivorship principles to the joint accounts.

## Issues

1. Whether the court could find, on foreign presumptive-death decrees plus documentary and expert evidence, that Otakar predeceased Viktor for purposes of joint-account survivorship.
2. Whether such foreign decrees and Holocaust-era evidence were competent and sufficient to support an order directing New York banks to pay joint-account deposits to Viktor’s estate.

## Decision

- The Surrogate’s Court granted the petition.
- The court found the evidence sufficient to establish that Otakar predeceased Viktor.
- Treating Viktor as the surviving joint tenant, the court ordered the respondent banks to pay the joint-account deposits to Mautner as administratrix of Viktor’s estate.

## Legal Principles

- Joint bank accounts ordinarily carry a right of survivorship; distribution depends on which joint tenant survived.
- When the order of death is disputed, the court may determine survivorship from the totality of available proof rather than defaulting to a simultaneous-death assumption.
- Foreign presumptive-death decrees may be received as probative evidence of death and timing and may be weighed with other evidence; they are not necessarily conclusive on New York property distribution questions.
- Expert testimony and historical evidence concerning wartime deportations and camp practices may support reasonable inferences about the time and sequence of deaths when direct proof is unavailable.

## Conclusion

The court accepted foreign death decrees, deportation records, and expert testimony as sufficient to determine survivorship between joint depositors who disappeared during the Holocaust, and it ordered payment of the New York joint-account funds to the estate of the depositor found to have survived.


In re Kohn's Estate, 124 N.Y.S.2d 861 (Sur. Ct. N.Y. Cnty. 1953)