Supreme Court of Connecticut, 2023

The court held that a trustee of an existing inter vivos trust that is the residuary beneficiary of an unsettled estate has a duty to investigate, protect, and collect the trust's prospective interest in estate assets, even before those assets are transferred to the trust.

The dissent would have upheld the in terrorem clauses, reasoning that judicial invalidation requires a strong, important, clearly articulated, and dominant public policy that outweighs the testator's authority to condition testamentary benefits.