Nurse Practitioner Is Entitled To Quantum Meruit Additional Compensation From Estate For Financial And Administrative Services To Decedent
In the estate administration and estate litigation case of Estate of Rubenstein, PICS Case No. 15-0136 (C.P. Philadelphia Nov. 24, 2014) the Honorable John W. Herron ruled that the claimant’s disinterested witnesses were sufficient to establish that she had provided financial and administrative services to the decedent for which she had not been compensated and thus she was entitled to quantum meruit compensation from the estate.
Dorothy Martin, a licensed nurse practitioner, was hired sometime prior to 1990 to provide nursing services to Emanuel and Rose Rubenstein. After Emmanuel’s death in 1990, she continued to provide nursing, as well as other services, to Rose.
Rose died testate in 2010. Letters of administration were granted to Dirk Simpson. In August 2012, Martin filed a notice of claim against Rose’s estate for $521,600 for uncompensated non-nursing services she had rendered to Rose.
Simpson filed an account of his administration showing a balance of principal and income of $260,990. He proposed to distribute that amount to charities named in Rose’s will after paying all debts and a specific bequest. Martin filed objections to the account to assert her quantum meruit claim.
At a hearing on her claim, Martin presented four disinterested witnesses who testified to the array of skilled services beyond nursing that she provided to Rose. Two were longtime Merrill Lynch financial advisers to the Rubensteins. They testified that Martin paid bills; alerted Merrill Lynch when cash was needed for household expenses; hired, trained and fired caretakers when Rose needed 24-hour care; managed household affairs; and supervised Rose’s medical care. They said Martin’s hours were long and that she was there whenever needed. One, Sally Glassman, opined that Martin spent one-quarter to one-half of her time performing managerial tasks. As to why Martin’s pay had not been increased to compensate for her extra tasks, Glassman said that both she and Martin had felt uncomfortable increasing Martin’s pay when Rose, who suffered from dementia, lacked the capacity to appreciate the necessity for such an increase.
The court said that in seeking payment for the services beyond nursing care, Martin had to prove her quantum meruit claim and that typically, in such a case, the party seeking payment from a decedent’s estate was barred under the Deadman’s Rule, 42 Pa. C.S.A. 5930, from testifying about conversations with the decedent or as to any transaction or event which occurred before the decedent’s death. It said Martin overcame this obstacle by presenting the disinterested, authoritative witnesses regarding the nature and extent of her services.
The court rejected the administrator’s contention that Martin’s claim should be denied due to the legal presumption of payment, finding that numerous Pennsylvania cases had concluded that the presumption of periodic payment was limited to domestic or nursing services. The court also noted the undisputed evidence that Martin presented showing that she had been compensated only for her nursing services.
Concluding that Martin had established that she had provided uncompensated financial and administrative services to Rose, the court then addressed the amount of damages. It found that the four year statute of it 42 Pa.C.S.A. 5525 was applicable and ran back from Aug. 24, 2012, when Martin filed her notice of claim. Thus she was entitled to compensation for her services to Rose between Aug. 24, 2008 and Rose’s death.
Stating that claims against a decedent’s estate were subject to strict scrutiny, the court adopted Glassman’s more conservative estimate that Martin spent one-quarter of her time on non-nursing task and conservatively credited Martin with working a 40-hour week. It adopted the more conservative estimate in Martin’s expert’s report that care managers would have been paid $85 per hour during the relevant period. It then integrated the salary differential between the payments she received for nursing services and that due for care manager services and determined that Martin was entitled to $69,680 as quantum meruit compensation.
Reference: Digest of Recent Opinions, Pennsylvania Law Weekly, 38 PLW 114 (February 3, 2015)
Filed Under: Estate Litigation; Estate Administration
Please visit our Estate Litigation & Probate & Estate Administration websites for more information on this topic.