Judge wants more evidence in inheritance case

The Superior Court wants more evidence to establish whether an estate has the right to inherit from two estates that received part of the $4.7 million land compensation settlement.

Associate Judge Juan T. Lizama ordered the estate of Dolores K. Pelisamen to present expert testimony on the method of inheritance for adopted children in the Carolinian community.

Lizama further ordered the Dolores Pelisamen estate to submit to the court other potential names from which the court may call for additional evidence.

The judge set the hearing regarding the claim of the Dolores Pelisamen estate on March 24, 2006 at 1:30pm.

Following the hearing, Lizama said, he will render a decision regarding the right of the Dolores Pelisamen estate to take from both the Rita Kaipat and Isaac Kaipat estates.

The Rita Kaipat estate was awarded $4.7 million in land compensation settlement by the defunct Marianas Public Lands Authority. The amount was split equally among three estates, including the estates of Rita and Isaac Kaipat.

According to court documents, Isaac Kaipat, one of three children of Vicenta Kaipat, died in 1944. The estates of Vicenta and her children, Rita, Benigno and Isaac, have only recently been probated, following the availability of compensation from a land condemnation.

The Isaac Kaipat estate asserted that the deadline for claims was Oct. 24, 2005.

Dolores Pelisamen’s estate filed its claim in the estate of Vicenta Kaipat (Isaac’s mother) on Oct. 3, 2005. The claim was refiled Jan. 12, 2006 in the Isaac Kaipat estate.

In February 2006, the Isaac Kaipat estate’s administratrix, Mystica Kaipat, denied the claim, asserting untimeliness, unclean hands, and inconsistency with Carolinian custom.

Dolores Pelisamen was the natural-born daughter of Isaac Kaipat. When Isaac died in 1944, Dolores Pelisamen was customarily adopted by Rita Kaipat.

Rita, Isaac’s sister and the only daughter of Vicenta Kaipat, became the trustee of the Kaipat family land located in Chalan Laulau.

Dolores Pelisamen had several children, including Luis Pelisamen, whom the court appointed to be the administrator for the estate of Rita Kaipat.

The heirs of Dolores Pelisamen claimed a share in the estate of both Rita and Isaac. The property sought in both probates is the same: a share in land compensation monies from the CNMI government.

The land, which was condemned for a roadway, was adjudicated to be family land belonging to all the heirs of Vicenta Kaipat.

Administratrix Mystica Kaipat noted that Dolores Pelisamen’s heirs, especially Luis Pelisamen, had been involved in probating Vicenta’s and Rita’s estates for years.

The lawyer for the Dolores Pelisamen estate argued that the claim is not untimely since he [counsel] timely filed a claim for inheritance through Isaac Kaipat in the probate of Vicenta Kaipat’s estate.

Dolores Pelisamen’s estate bases its right to inherit from both the Rita Kaipat and Isaac Kaipat estates on a statute, which provides that an “adopted child may also inherit from his natural parents and kindred the same as if no adoption had taken place.”

In his order, Lizama said one’s status as an adopted child should not automatically entitle him or her to inherit from the estates of both the natural and adoptive parents.

“Evidence of an intent of the parents to bestow inheritance rights, and or customary law, are needed to determine the distribution of property,” Lizama said.

The judge said decedent Isaac Kaipat is of Carolinian descent.

“Unfortunately, as Carolinian culture within the CNMI is passed down orally, there is little written material that the court can consult regarding inheritance rights,” he said.

Both the administratrix and the claimant are called upon to offer expert testimony of how Carolinian culture would govern inheritance claims from the estates of both a natural and an adoptive parent.

Lizama said that at the March 7, 2006 hearing, administratrix presented Florence Kirby as an expert in Carolinian culture.

The court will refrain from analyzing the evidence presented by Kirby until both sides have had a chance to present expert testimony, he said.

Lizama said the administratrix also asserted that the misuse of family land bars Dolores Pelisamen’s heirs from asserting a claim in Isaac’s estate under the doctrine of unclean hands.

While Dolores Pelisamen and one of her heirs, Luis Pelisamen, may have engaged in misconduct with respect to family land in the Vicenta Kaipat estate, the alleged activity is too tangential to bar Dolores’ estate from asserting a claim in Isaac Kaipat’s estate, the judge noted.

“At the time of the activity, Isaac’s probate had not even been opened. The main focus of the instant probate is not family land, but a right to money apportioned to Isaac’s estate for land compensation. Thus, the doctrine of unclean hands does not apply,” Lizama said.