Sister Blocks Dead Brother's Wishes For His Gay Partner

A California Court of Appeal based in Santa Ana ruled this week that an Orange County Superior Court judge improperly sided against a gay man seeking assets from his deceased partner's estate.

Before he died in October 2010, James Humpert promised Richard Allen–his longtime, loving partner–that he “would be taken care of” after his death.

But Humpert had named his sister, Edith Marlynne Stoddard, as his estate's administrator and she isn't willing to obey her brother's wishes.

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Allen filed a lawsuit 91 days after Stoddard's notice, but David I. Hood, a temporary judge, sided with Stoddard on a technicality: the lawsuit was one day late and thus untimely.

But a three-justice appellate panel–William Bedsworth, William Rylaarsdam and Eileen Moore–noted established legal recognition of Humpert's promise to Allen and reversed Hood by declaring he'd applied the wrong statute of limitations.

Upshot: The justices ordered the case reopened and to be tried on the merits of Allen's argument.

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R. Scott Moxley

CNN-featured investigative reporter R. Scott Moxley has won Journalist of the Year honors at the Los Angeles Press Club; been named Distinguished Journalist of the Year by the LA Society of Professional Journalists; obtained one of the last exclusive prison interviews with Charles Manson disciple Susan Atkins; won inclusion in Jeffrey Toobin’s The Best American Crime Reporting for his coverage of a white supremacist’s senseless murder of a beloved Vietnamese refugee; launched multi-year probes that resulted in the FBI arrests and convictions of the top three ranking members of the Orange County Sheriff’s Department; and gained praise from New York Times Magazine writers for his “herculean job” exposing entrenched Southern California law enforcement corruption.

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