Also known as: facts of independent significance · fact of independent significance · independent significance doctrine · independent significance
Written by attorneys · grounded in primary & secondary sources — see below
A doctrine in the law of wills that validates a testamentary reference to an external act or event possessing significance apart from its effect on the will.
Deanna Davenport executed a will pouring the residue of her estate into a revocable trust she had created years earlier to manage family investments. The trust had been funded during her life and operated for investment purposes independent of any testamentary plan. Because the trust possessed independent significance apart from the will, the pour-over devise is valid under the doctrine.
Darius Dixon's will directed that his residuary estate be distributed as provided in his wife's separate will. The wife's decision to execute or revoke her own will carries independent legal consequences for her estate and is not undertaken merely to affect Darius's dispositions. The reference is therefore valid under the doctrine.
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The act or event must possess a motive, purpose, or significance separate and apart from its effect on the will. Household employment, investment decisions, and another person's estate planning all qualify because they occur for non-testamentary reasons.
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Incorporation by reference requires the external writing to have existed when the will was executed and to be identified with particularity. The doctrine of facts of independent significance does not require the writing to preexist or to satisfy those formal requirements when the referenced act or event has independent meaning.
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No. An unfunded trust created solely for testamentary purposes lacks independent significance apart from the will. Validation then depends on a pour-over statute or incorporation by reference rather than the doctrine.
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No. The doctrine focuses on whether the referenced act or event would have occurred for reasons apart from the will, not on whether the document remains static after execution.
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…a subsequent amendment is effective because of the applicability of the established equitable doctrine that subsequent acts of independent significance do not require attestation under the statute of wills.” Id. at 369. At that time we noted that “[t]he long established recognition in Massachusetts of the doctrine of independent…