Estate of Villwock
Wisconsin Court of Appeals
418 N.W.2d 1 (1987)
Roy suffered heart and lung failure in the ambulance following a car accident that his treating physician later testified was medically irreversible at that moment, even though CPR sustained circulation for roughly an hour until June was pronounced dead first, with Roy officially pronounced dead only minutes later; Roy's will left everything to June without any contingency for her predeceasing him, and his daughter from a prior marriage, Hintz (plaintiff), argued the couple actually died simultaneously under the Simultaneous Death Act, disputing the trial court's finding that Roy died first, passing his estate to June and then on to her own heirs.
Whether, where distribution of a decedent's estate depends on priority of death, and the decedent suffers irreversible heart and lung failure immediately before the death of the beneficiary, the beneficiary is considered to have survived the decedent for purposes of inheriting.