## Facts

- Ronald Bruce Goode died domiciled in Caddo Parish, Louisiana, leaving no ascendants or descendants and surviving collateral relatives (a half-brother and descendants of a predeceased half-sister).
- Goode executed an olographic will that contained specific dispositions but no residuary clause.
- A contested provision directed that all oil and gas royalty interest payments be paid to Pauline Egbert Parker for her lifetime and, after her death, that any such payments be divided equally among named nieces and nephews and Linda Cosby Paine.
- Collateral relatives challenged the provision as a null “substitution” prohibited by Louisiana Civil Code article 1520.
- The matter was tried on stipulated facts, presenting only a characterization and validity question.

## Issues

1. Whether a will provision paying oil and gas royalty payments to one person for life and thereafter to others is a prohibited substitution under Louisiana Civil Code article 1520.
2. Whether the clause should instead be construed as a valid grant of successive rights to income (akin to a usufruct), consistent with interpretive rules favoring effectiveness of testamentary dispositions.

## Decision

- The Louisiana Supreme Court reversed the lower courts.
- The court held the provision was not a prohibited substitution and was valid.
- The court construed the clause as creating successive rights to royalty payments (income), not a double disposition in full ownership with an obligation to preserve and transmit the same thing.
- The case was remanded for further proceedings consistent with the ruling.

## Legal Principles

- A prohibited substitution (outside authorized trust arrangements) requires: (1) a double disposition in full ownership of the same thing to successive beneficiaries, (2) a charge on the first beneficiary to preserve and transmit the thing to the second, and (3) a successive order causing the thing to leave the first beneficiary’s patrimony and enter the second’s.
- Testamentary dispositions must be interpreted, when reasonably possible, to give them effect rather than nullify them (La. Civ. Code art. 1713).
- A disposition of a usufruct is not prohibited, and successive usufructs are permitted; a testamentary scheme granting successive enjoyment of income may be upheld when it lacks a preservation-and-return charge typical of substitutions.
- Language directing payment of “royalty payments” for life and then to others may be treated as an income-interest arrangement rather than a transfer of full ownership of the underlying property subject to a forbidden charge.

## Conclusion

The court upheld a clause granting lifetime receipt of oil and gas royalty payments to one beneficiary with subsequent payment rights to others, holding that—properly construed to give effect to the will—it created permissible successive income rights and did not constitute a prohibited substitution under Louisiana law.


Succession of Goode, 425 So. 2d 673 (La. 1982)