## Facts

- Ira Collins Soper married Adeline Johnson Soper in Kentucky in 1911 and lived with her and her children until 1921.
- In 1921, Soper disappeared after staging a false suicide, leaving notes and circumstances that caused his wife and others to believe he was dead.
- Soper relocated to Minnesota, assumed the name John W. Young, and lived under that identity for the rest of his life.
- In Minnesota, Soper entered a business relationship with a partner, formed a closely held corporation, and held corporate stock.
- Soper underwent a marriage ceremony with Gertrude Whitby, who was known in Minnesota as Gertrude Young; those dealing with them treated her as his wife.
- Soper, his business partner, and a trust company executed an escrow arrangement: each shareholder would obtain life insurance on his own life naming the trust company as beneficiary; the corporation would pay premiums; on a shareholder’s death, the trust company would pay proceeds to the decedent’s “wife” and transfer the decedent’s stock to the surviving shareholder.
- After Soper’s death, the trustee collected the insurance proceeds, paid them to Gertrude as the “surviving wife,” and transferred Soper’s corporate stock to the business partner.
- Adeline later learned Soper had lived under an assumed identity and, with the estate administrator, sued Gertrude and the trustee to recover the insurance proceeds.

## Issues

1. Whether the insurance-and-escrow arrangement functioned as a testamentary disposition subject to will rules, or as a valid inter vivos contract.
2. Whether “wife” or “surviving wife” in the arrangement referred to the legal पत्नी (Adeline) or the putative spouse (Gertrude), and whether extrinsic evidence was admissible to resolve the meaning.

## Decision

- The Minnesota Supreme Court affirmed the order denying a new trial and upheld judgment for Gertrude and the trustee.
- The court held the arrangement was contractual and inter vivos, not testamentary.
- The court held the term “wife” was ambiguous when applied to the facts (a latent ambiguity), permitting consideration of surrounding circumstances.
- Based on the parties’ shared understanding and dealings, the court concluded the parties intended “wife” to mean Gertrude, so payment to her was proper.

## Legal Principles

- A conventional life-insurance trust or escrow arrangement that creates present contractual rights and duties is an inter vivos contract rather than a testamentary disposition.
- Contract language that appears clear on its face may be latently ambiguous when applied to the subject matter; such ambiguity permits use of extrinsic evidence without violating the parol evidence rule.
- Where an agreement designates a beneficiary by status (e.g., “wife”) and the parties’ dealings show a common understanding of who holds that status for purposes of the contract, courts may enforce that intended designation even if the person is not the legal spouse.

## Conclusion

The court enforced an insurance-based escrow as a binding inter vivos contract and, treating “wife” as latently ambiguous, relied on surrounding circumstances to identify the intended recipient as the decedent’s putative spouse, thereby validating the trustee’s payment of proceeds to her and rejecting the estate’s and legal wife’s claim.


In re Soper’s Estate, 196 Minn. 60, 264 N.W. 427 (Minn. 1935)