Baron v. Williams (In re Estate of Williams)
Florida Supreme Court
182 So. 2d 10 (1965)
- Written by Liz Nakamura, JD
Facts
The Third District Court of Appeal certified two cases to the Florida Supreme Court as questions of great public interest. In both cases, the county court ruled, and the district court affirmed, that a testator’s mark, such as an X, was not a sufficient signature to execute a will and that the signature must be the full alphabetical name. Bette Baron (plaintiff) challenged those rulings, arguing that a mark was a sufficient signature. Elizabeth Williams (defendant) countered, arguing that (1) only a full alphabetical signature could be used by a handwriting expert to determine the validity of the signature; (2) requiring that a signature be the full alphabetical name would prevent fraud; and (3) Florida law allowed another person to subscribe the testator’s signature if the testator could not sign personally, which also helped to protect against fraud because the subscriber was likely to verify the testator’s identity before signing.
Rule of Law
Issue
Holding and Reasoning (O’Connell, J.)
What to do next…
Here's why 816,000 law students have relied on our case briefs:
- Written by law professors and practitioners, not other law students. 46,300 briefs, keyed to 988 casebooks. Top-notch customer support.
- The right amount of information, includes the facts, issues, rule of law, holding and reasoning, and any concurrences and dissents.
- Access in your classes, works on your mobile and tablet. Massive library of related video lessons and high quality multiple-choice questions.
- Easy to use, uniform format for every case brief. Written in plain English, not in legalese. Our briefs summarize and simplify; they don’t just repeat the court’s language.
