Vasil and Hellen Pavlinko must have thought they had done the right thing. In 1949, the Pavlinkos, residents of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, decided to hire a lawyer to have their wills prepared, which certainly was a wise decision. Unfortunately, the Pavlinkos wrote another chapter in the story of why “the law” sometimes makes so little sense to the average person.
The Pavlinkos were immigrants from eastern Europe, as have been many people who live in the Pittsburgh area. They spoke a language known as Little Russian, or Carpathian, and were fluent in neither English nor the American legal system.
But as is not surprising in Pittsburgh, they found a lawyer who was also a fellow countryman. He discussed their intentions with them in their native language and then prepared their wills in English, translating each clause into Carpathian before they signed the papers. The wills were quite short, and virtually identical. Each left property to the other spouse, and once the other had died, left it to Mrs. Pavlinko’s brother, Elias Martin.
The Pavlinkos were satisfied, and signed the documents. The lawyer and his secretary acted as witnesses. It was at this point that something went wrong — somewhere in shuffling papers back and forth in the lawyer’s office, Mrs. Pavlinko accidentally signed the will prepared for her husband, and he signed the will meant for her.
At first, no one noticed. Mrs. Pavlinko died in 1951, and no one apparently questioned her husband’s rights to their property. When he died in 1957, though, Mrs. Pavlinko’s brother tried claim his inheritance, and the problems began.
The first court to review Vasil’s will declared it invalid. The will signed by Mr. Pavlinko, started out, “I, Hellen Pavlinko,” referred at one point to “my husband,” and identified Mr. Martin as “my brother.” Vasil, of course, was not “Hellen,” he had no “husband,” and Elias was not his brother — he was Vasil’s brother-in-law. The decision left Mr. Martin in the same position as if Vasil Pavlinko had died without a will.
The case was appealed and eventually made its way to the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, which reached the same conclusion. Legally, Mr. Pavlinko had died without a will, even though everyone knew exactly what happened, and also agreed that both Pavlinkos wanted Mr. Martin to have their property no matter which one died last. The court talked a lot about the danger of fraud if courts started to follow a principle that a court can just do what “everyone knows” a will was intended to say instead of what it actually said. And so Mr. Martin got nothing, or at least much less than his relatives intended.
One of the Justices, Michael Musmanno, disagreed, and disagreed very strongly. Musmanno was something of a maverick — often writing long opinions on points his fellow judges had chosen to ignore — but in this case, he was more eloquent than usual (although just as long-winded as usual).
In invalidating Vasil Pavlinko’s will, Musmanno said, his court “creates another enigma for the layman to ponder over, regarding the mysterious manner in which the law operates, its wonders to perform. Everyone in this case admits a mistake was made: an honest, innocent, unambiguous simple mistake, the innocent, drowsy mistake of the man who sleeps all day and, on awakening, accepts the sunset for the dawn.”
Musmanno went on at length about mistakes: how mistakes occur every day, yet people so often try to help others escape from mistakes that plunge them into peril. “This Court, however,” he wrote, “says it can do nothing for the victim of the mistake in this case, a mistake that was caused through no fault of his own, nor of his intended benefactors.”
At times, Musmanno’s eloquence got the better of him: “Cannot the law, therefore, dedicated as it is to the truth, with all its wisdom and majestic power, correct this mistake which cries out for correction? . . . Can anyone go to the graves of the Pavlinkos and say that we do not know what they meant?”
Musmanno actually had a reasonable legal argument about how his court could have relied on only a portion of the will, ignoring the language that was clearly inapplicable. Considering that everyone really did “know” what had gone wrong, his suggestion offered an alternate path his court could have followed to give effect to the Pavlinko’s wishes.
But it did not. But it’s Musmanno’s closing comment that makes the case most memorable. He wrote: “Here, indeed, is a situation where we could, if we wished, consistent with authority and precedent, and without endangering the integrity of the Wills Act, put into effect the time-honored proverb that “where there’s a will, there’s a way.”
Frank Zotter, Jr. is a Ukiah attorney.
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