Hasty v. Castleberry

The appellant did not breach his fiduciary duty as trustee for the parties' parents' respective estates by serving as the co-chair of a university's capital campaign committee and donating $1M from the marital trust's corpus to the university.

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In these consolidated cases, the Superior Court of Cherokee County granted partial summary judgment to Joan Hasty Castleberry “Joan” and denied summary judgment to her brother, William G. Hasty, Jr. “William”, with respect to Joan’s claims regarding William’s alleged mismanagement of trust assets as the trustee of a marital trust and with respect to William’s alleged collection of excessive executor’s fees as the executor of their parents’ respective estates. For the reasons set forth below, we affirm in part and reverse in part the trial court’s grant of partial summary judgment to Joan.1

The record reveals that William G. Hasty, Sr. “Mr. Hasty”, died in November 2003, leaving a gross estate of over $10 million “Mr. Hasty’s Estate” or the “Estate”. His will the “Will directed most of the Estate assets into a marital trust for the lifetime support of his wife the “Marital Trust”, Hazel Wyatt Hasty “Mrs. Hasty”, and the remainder to his three children: Dixie Kinard, William, and Joan. William was named Executor of the Estate and Trustee of the Marital Trust. The Marital Trust was valued initially at over $6 million, a large portion of which included almost 85,000 shares of Wachovia Bank common stock. Although the stock’s value decreased precipitously over time, William, as Trustee of the Marital Trust, kept the stock as a Trust asset. The Will directed the Trustee to pay all Marital Trust income for the exclusive benefit of Mrs. Hasty and to encroach upon the principal of the Marital Trust for Mrs. Hasty’s support if the Trustee determined that the income being paid to Mrs. Hasty would be insufficient to provide for her “proper support or maintenance, or to enable her to meet any difficulty produced by sickness, accident, or similar cause.”

Hasty v. Castleberry

The appellant did not breach his fiduciary duty as trustee for the parties' parents' respective estates by serving as the co-chair of a university's capital campaign committee and donating $1M from the marital trust's corpus to the university.

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