## Facts

- Lawrence H. Mathias executed a document titled “Declaration of Trust,” listing certain property to be held in the “Lawrence H. Mathias Trust of Dover, Ohio.”
- The declaration directed the trustee to distribute trust income to Mathias during his lifetime and included provisions directing distribution of remaining property to others upon Mathias’s death, including Linda Sue Fantine.
- Mathias named himself as trustee in the trust instrument.
- After Mathias died, Eugene H. Mathias, as administrator of Lawrence Mathias’s estate, filed an action in the Tuscarawas County Court of Common Pleas, Probate Division, seeking a declaration that:
  - the trust was void from inception because the grantor, trustee, and beneficiary were the same person; and
  - addenda to the trust were invalid because they were executed under undue influence and/or duress.
- The administrator also sought a writ of execution to recover property allegedly belonging to the estate that was in Fantine’s possession.
- The probate court granted summary judgment for the administrator, finding the trust instrument and its addenda “void and ineffective.”
- Fantine appealed; other named beneficiaries did not participate in the appeal.

## Issues

1. Whether the probate court erred by applying the doctrine of merger to invalidate the declaration of trust on the ground that Mathias was the grantor, trustee, and sole lifetime beneficiary.
2. Whether the probate court erred by declaring the entire trust void instead of applying severability to preserve the provisions benefiting third parties at or after Mathias’s death.
3. Whether the probate court misread Article I (and the instrument as a whole) in concluding that Mathias was the sole trustee, causing legal and equitable interests to unite in him.

## Decision

- The Court of Appeals of Ohio, Fifth Appellate District, affirmed the probate court’s grant of summary judgment to the estate administrator.
- The court agreed that, because Mathias was the trustee and the sole present beneficiary during his lifetime, the legal and equitable interests united in the same person and the trust failed under the merger doctrine.
- The court rejected Fantine’s argument that the instrument could be saved by severing invalid portions, because the attempted inter vivos trust did not create a valid trust relationship in the first place.
- The court upheld the probate court’s construction of the declaration, including its conclusion that Mathias served as the trustee and that the instrument did not create a separate trustee holding title for the present benefit of anyone other than Mathias.

## Legal Principles

- A valid inter vivos trust requires a separation between legal title (held by a trustee) and an equitable or beneficial interest (held by one or more beneficiaries).
- When one person holds the entire legal title and the entire present beneficial interest in the same right, the equitable interest merges into the legal title and the trust fails.
- Post-death distribution directions do not prevent merger at creation if the instrument gives no present beneficial interest to anyone other than the settlor during the settlor’s lifetime.
- Severability cannot preserve remainder-type provisions when the instrument fails to establish a valid inter vivos trust at the outset, leaving no enforceable trust estate for the remainder provisions to operate on.

## Conclusion

The appellate court affirmed summary judgment declaring Mathias’s “Declaration of Trust” and its addenda void and ineffective because Mathias was both trustee and sole lifetime beneficiary, so legal and equitable interests merged and no valid inter vivos trust was created; the instrument’s after-death distribution terms could not be preserved through severability.


Mathias v. Fantine, 1990 WL 21446 (1990)