A judge has decided that a local man was not under an "insane delusion" when he left his estate, valued at more than $1 million, to the Lancaster Public Library instead of his family.
Yet the battle over Thomas Bucher's will is not over, and could flare up again in the Lancaster County Court of Common Pleas.
Bucher, the son of former Lancaster County Court Judge Wilson Bucher, died in July 2008 in his Columbia home of a self-inflicted gunshot wound. A month later, his father challenged his will in orphan's court, saying Thomas Bucher was under an "insane delusion" when he revised his will in 2003 to disinherit his family.
That "delusion," wrote attorney Steven Blair — married to Wilson Bucher's daughter Christine and representing Bucher in the case — was that Thomas Bucher's family was "stealing from him."
Because of Wilson Bucher's history on the Lancaster County bench, the case was assigned to Judge C. Joseph Rehkamp of Perry County. On June 30, Rehkamp dismissed Wilson Bucher's motion for summary judgment, ruling that while there's no evidence his family was stealing from him, Thomas Bucher "had a strained relationship with his father and mother and siblings, and had expressed animus toward his brothers-in-law, particularly Steven R. Blair" — and that his suspicions did not amount to an "insane delusion."
Blair, on behalf of Wilson Bucher, subsequently filed a claim demanding a jury trial, asking that Thomas Bucher's entire residuary estate — which he valued at $1.25 million — be awarded to the Bucher family, on the basis of an "oral contract" Thomas Bucher had made before his death.
The Lancaster Public Library and the state Attorney General's Charitable Trusts and Organizations Section continue to oppose efforts to overturn the will. Bob Hallinger of Appel & Yost, who represents the library in the case, said that while Rehkamp dismissed the motion for summary judgment, he has yet to issue a final ruling on the "insane delusion" claim; that could come in September. Then the new claim regarding the oral contract is likely to be filed in the Court of Common Pleas.
"This is probably going to go on for a long time," he said.
Blair did not return a phone message left at his office seeking comment. He declined comment when the Sunday News initially reported on the case earlier this year.
Nils Frederiksen, a spokesman for Pennsylvania Attorney General Thomas Corbett, declined comment, saying, "This matter is moving toward trial and as a policy it is not appropriate for our attorneys to conduct interviews about ongoing legal actions."
Earlier this year, Frederiksen told the Sunday News that the charitable trusts section reviews cases involving wills that are challenged, though "it's not routine" for the office to get involved.
Both the office and the library had asked that Blair be disqualified as attorney for petitioner Wilson Bucher due to his close connection to the case. But Rehkamp ruled against those requests, saying that "this court is satisfied, upon review of the case file, under the circumstances of this matter, that [Blair] shall continue as attorney for petitioner."
Thomas Bucher, 59 when he died, worked as a supervisor with the Impaired Driver Program of the Adult Probation and Parole Office for Lancaster County Court. He was scheduled to retire just weeks after he was found in his Columbia residence.
In his court filings, Blair — on behalf of Wilson Bucher — wrote that Thomas Bucher had been "diagnosed with signs of paranoid schizophrenia" in 1975, though he was never medicated for that condition. By the late 1990s, Thomas Bucher had begun to voice misgivings about his brothers-in-law — accusing them, for example, of "going to Las Vegas and blowing all their money," wrote Blair. The allegation, Blair said, was false.
Still, Blair asserted, Thomas Bucher enjoyed a relatively warm relationship with his family. But a definitive break occurred when Thomas Bucher's aunt, Helen Bucher, died in 2003. The family was discussing how her antiques might be split among the heirs. Thomas Bucher — the oldest of three siblings and the one to which his two sisters often deferred — had a plan.
Blair, according to the deposition of his wife, Christine, said: "Well, Tom, that might be one way to do it, but I think we should do it this way," a different way.
She said in the deposition she caught a look in her brother's eye at that moment, and that this was the beginning of the rift.
Subsequently, when Blair distributed money from the Helen Bucher estate, Thomas Bucher refused to sign a receipt and release. His refusal culminated in a confrontation at his home, where Thomas Bucher accused family members of "being part of a conspiracy to deprive him of his fair share of the Helen Bucher estate," Blair wrote.
Just weeks after that confrontation, Thomas Bucher had his attorney, Theodore Brubaker, draw up a new will that read: "I, Thomas W. Bucher, revoke my prior wills and declare this to be my last will." All his personal and household effects, including automobiles, were to be sold, and the proceeds added to his residuary estate.
"I give the residue of my estate, real and personal, to the Lancaster County Library, Lancaster, Pennsylvania," the will reads.
The library, on North Duke Street in Lancaster, has since changed its name to the Lancaster Public Library.
Blair noted that aside from having a library card and being registered to use the library computers, Thomas Bucher had no other connection with the library.
His decision, Blair asserted, reflected his "insane delusion."
The library and the commonwealth responded that Thomas Bucher's suspicions did not make him insane.
Wrote Hallinger, the library's attorney: "Tom Bucher realized that he had no actual evidence of theft. All he told his family was that he was not getting his fair share and was being denied his rights. He was suspicious enough not to sign a release and he was suspicious enough to consult an attorney. What is irrational about that?"
Hallinger also noted that in depositions, Wilson Bucher's daughter Anne Owen said the retired judge had told his son, " 'You are out of the family,' or something like that." "With that kind of response," Hallinger wrote, "was a change in [Thomas Bucher's] will irrational? Should it even have been unexpected?
"The petitioner told Tom he was out of the family, but now he claims Tom's estate as his," Hallinger wrote.
Blair countered in a filing that Wilson Bucher never made such a statement, and "If Thomas was out of the family it was because he withdrew."
"The will proponents," he wrote, assert that simply because Blair "had been the power of attorney for Helen Bucher and had been appointed as her executor, and therefore had legal authority over her financial affairs, there is a reasonable basis for Tom Bucher to be suspicious of his efforts — this is absurd. There is not one scintilla of objective evidence that anything had been done wrong."
Nevertheless, in rejecting the motion for summary judgment, Rehkamp ruled he was satisfied that Thomas Bucher "had a rational basis for willing his entire estate to a charity."
"Despite the argument of Attorney Blair that Thomas Bucher had an insane delusion at the time he executed his will, none of the answers supplied by the scrivener of the will nor his associate indicate other than a rational mindset in willing his estate to the Lancaster Public Library," Rehkamp wrote.
"There is, at minimum, a genuine dispute of material fact as to the state of the mind of the decedent [Thomas Bucher] to prevent the granting of a motion for summary judgment in this matter."
Hallinger noted that winning an "insane delusion" claim is exceedingly rare in Pennsylvania: In more than 140 years, it has been used successfully fewer than 10 times. "People file these claims," he said, but they rarely go far.
A hearing must still be held before Rehkamp on the "insane delusion" claim, but according to Hallinger the new claim citing the "oral contract" indicates that Thomas Bucher's family is shifting gears, basing its challenge on an alleged breach of contract rather than Thomas Bucher's state of mind.
Hallinger said that might be tough to prove because of Pennsylvania's "Dead Man's Act," a statute designed to "prevent the injustice that may result from permitting a surviving party to a transaction to give testimony favorable to himself and adverse to the decedent, which the decedent's representative would be in no position to refute by reason of the decedent's death," as summarized in a 1990 Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruling.
"But that claim can't be determined until we get final determination of the will contest," said Hallinger.
Gil Smart is associate editor of the Sunday News. E-mail him at gsmart@lnpnews.com, or phone 291-8817. 
