Chancellor Jeffrey Atherton on Wednesday granted the motion to dismiss the will contest of the five children omitted from J. Don Brock's multi-million-dollar estate.
He dismissed the will contest on the grounds the plaintiffs had no standing based on Tennessee law.
The decision is expected to be appealed to the Tennessee Court of Appeals
Dr. Brock, the founder and former CEO of Astec Industries – an asphalt equipment company – left five of his seven adopted children out of his will before he succumbed to his three-year battle with mesothelioma last March.
Melissa Brock Adcock, Krystal Brock Parker, Jennifer Brock, Daryl Brock, and Walter Brock expected to receive inheritance from their father’s estate.
When they discovered they had been disinherited, they contested the will in a lawsuit, claiming their stepmother Sammye Brock used “undue influence” to chop them off from the will drawn up in October 2013.
Together, Dr. and Ms. Brock have nine children from former marriages. Of the nine, Ms. Brock’s two children and Mr. Brock’s two eldest made the will. The left-out children challenged its validity. Ms. Brock was Dr. Brock’s receptionist before becoming his wife in 1998, two years after the CEO’s 31-year marriage to his first wife ended. It was stated that as his receptionist, Ms. Brock often signed Dr. Brock’s name on documents.
Questions thus surfaced about who actually signed the will – especially since Dr. Brock was undergoing aggressive cancer treatment at that time, the lawsuit maintained.
On Wednesday, Ms. Brock’s attorney, Richard Bathea, argued for the motion to dismiss the will contest. Under Tennessee law, he said the plaintiffs must have standing for a will contest to proceed.
Because Dr. Brock also had a will drawn up in 2012, attorney Bathea looked at this will in comparison to the 2013 one. "It's a simple process,” he said. “You look at the two wills. If they both disinherit, there is no standing."
According to attorney Bathea, both the 2012 and 2013 wills of Dr. Brock excluded his five children, meaning by law the children had no standing.
But other wills exist – like the 1994 one that included four of the five children, said Jerry Summers, the children’s attorney.
Attorney Summers argued the 2012 and 2013 wills were falsely created – one to validate the other. It was stated that at the time the children contested the 2013 will, they did not know about the one from 2012 – described as “a mere scrap of paper” – and therefore did not contest it.
They also did not contest the wills prior to the one from 2012. And, as it turns out, they may not be able to because a longstanding rule in Tennessee calls for reviewing only the will drafted before the one under contest. This means the wills that came before the 2012 one may not count in this case, it was stated.
Attorney Summers argued for the judge to grant standing so the will contest could be taken before a jury. He said this exceptional case necessitated a jury to hear from witnesses on what they saw the day the wills were executed.
He said it was clear attorney Bethea, who has long been involved in Dr. Brock’s business affairs, did not want "12 people to hear the facts” regarding the potential of the wills being fraudulent.
"Standing in Tennessee is standing in Tennessee," attorney Bethea said. He said now was not the time to try this case but to determine if the five children had standing to bring a lawsuit. "And they don't.”
Chancellor Atherton said he was "extremely troubled in light of the argument made by the contestants,” because it promoted the potential for fraud through the creation of two wills.