Dear Clients and Friends,

I am writing this blog in order to help our current and future prospective clients and our friends learn a bit about what we do, how we do it and to share some of the stories and cases our clients bring to us. I have changed the names of the individuals involved and have not disclosed any confidential matters. I hope you find the stories and events I write about interesting and informative.

When is a month a month? That’s the question on our minds today. I bring this up because it would seem that a month is not too complicated, but apparently to some lawyers, it is. I want to discuss a recent case where we represented the estate of a decedent, I’ll call “Frank”. Frank had a daughter that was the beneficiary of the estate and was appointed as the Personal Representative (PR) of her father’s estate. Frank also had a sister, “Sally”. When an estate is opened, a notice is required to be published in the newspaper called a Notice to Creditors. The date of first publication of the Notice begins a three-month time period within which any unknown creditors must file a claim in the Estate; the failing of which, their claim will be barred and their claim will not be paid. That is the law as written by the Legislature for the State of Florida. Sally was believed to have a possible claim against Frank’s estate, so specific Notice to Creditors was also served directly on her, too. Well, as luck would have it, Sally, through her lawyer, filed a claim against the estate one day after the date which was three months after the first date of publication of the Notice to Creditors. We believed and told our client, the PR, that Sally’s claim was late, and therefore, barred by the statute that requires all claims be timely filed or they are dismissed and not allowed. Our client agreed with our assessment that the claim was filed too late, even though by only one day. So, we filed a Motion to Dismiss the Claim. Now, the judge, she felt that while the legislature said that claims must be filed within three months of the date of first publication of the Notice to Creditors, you didn’t start counting the three months until the day after the first date of publication, so the claim was actually filed on the last day possible (according to her calculations) and was a timely filed claim. The lawyer for Sally argued that some months have 31 days and some have 28 days so three months could have as few as 84 days or as many as 93 days, although there is no three consecutive month time period in the calendar year that has more than 92 days or fewer than 89 days. When I read that I scratched my head and said “Huh?” Anyway, the case is on appeal to the appellate court, where I have great expectations the court will determine, as we have, that if the first day of publication for a Creditor’s Claim period was on, for example, January 4th – the last day for a creditor to file a claim in the estate is on April 4th, not April 5th as the trial court determined. I’ll write another blog message when the court decides and let all you readers find out who was right. Our firm or Sally’s lawyer and the judge.

I want to give a shout out to our young associate, Ms. Sarah Rummel, who did a bang-up job on preparing the research and most of the writing on our appellate brief. If we win the appeal, and I believe we will, it will be in large part to the excellent writing and analysis of Sarah. Of course, having the law on your side helps, too.

That’s all I have time for on this our fifth blog. I hope you found it interesting and enjoyable reading. Please check back for additional blog messages. And, as always, I want to say thanks to our clients and friends. If any reader has a legal matter or question, please let us know by emailing us or giving us a call. If we can help, we will. If we can’t, perhaps we can refer you to someone who can. If neither, well, it never hurts to say “Hello”.

Yours truly,

Jonathan S. Dean
Dean and Dean, LLP