Opinion
C.A. No. N17C-03-1679 WCC
01-08-2019
RE: Cephas v. Cephas
Michaela R. Cephas
423 Amberly Drive
Jamestown, NC 27282 Katrina D. Cephas
326 M. Street SW
Washington, DC 20024
On Defendant's Motion for Summary Judgment - GRANTED
Dear Mses. Cephas:
The Court has before it a Motion for Summary Judgment filed by Katrina Cephas ("Defendant"), in the above-captioned matter. For the reasons set forth below, the Motion will be granted.
The facts of the case are not in dispute. After Michaela Cephas' ("Plaintiff") mother died following surgery, a medical malpractice case resulted in a structured settlement agreement ("agreement") approved by the Superior Court on January 5, 2005. The dispute in this litigation revolves around the provision in the agreement that required payment to Defendant Katrina Cephas, as guardian of Plaintiff, in the amount of $500 a month until February 16, 2016. There is no dispute that Defendant was appropriately appointed as guardian, and under the settlement agreement, the monthly payments were paid to her until the guardianship was terminated in Chancery Court in March of 2016.
To complicate this matter, in January of 2007, the Family Court of Delaware granted custody of the Plaintiff to her father. Unfortunately, no action was taken at that time to alter the guardianship in any way, and Katrina Cephas continued to receive payments as authorized by the settlement agreement. It is the funds received by the Defendant from January of 2007, when Plaintiff began living with her father, to March of 2016, when the guardianship ended, that are now in dispute.
First, the Court finds there has been no breach of the settlement agreement. The agreement required the payments to Katrina Cephas until February of 2016, unless action was specifically undertaken to change the guardianship in Chancery Court. That was not done. Although the housing arrangements changed when the Plaintiff began living with her father, no action was taken to appropriately modify the guardianship arrangement. While there perhaps was an appropriate justification to modify the guardianship arrangement and have the Chancery Court replace Katrina Cephas with the Plaintiff's father, that was not done.
Secondly, the exact issue raised by the Plaintiff has been fully litigated in Chancery Court. While this Court agrees that the litigation was initiated by the Plaintiff's father in that Court, it was done so allegedly with the Plaintiff's "knowledge and consent." In the decision issued by Vice Chancellor Slights in February of 2017, that Court found the payments to the Defendant were appropriate, and if the Plaintiff wished to file litigation for a breach of fiduciary obligations, she should have done so in the Court of Chancery which administered the guardianship. Such action was never taken.
While the Court can sympathize that the Plaintiff believes the guardianship payments for her care should have been turned over to her father when he obtained custody in January of 2007, that simply was not done. As a result, to the extent that this Court has jurisdiction, it finds summary judgment for the Defendant is appropriate. There has been no breach of the settlement agreement by the Defendant, the payments were appropriately given to her pursuant to that settlement agreement, and any claims for breach of the fiduciary duty are not appropriately brought in this Court. As such, summary judgment is granted and the case is hereby dismissed.
IT IS SO ORDERED.
/s/_________
Judge William C. Carpenter, Jr.