A Texas grandmother’s safe-deposit box sparked a family fight over alleged $400,000 cash, an eight-carat diamond and gold coins; after a jury awarded her niece $796,906, an October 27 appeals court overturned it

A Texas grandmother’s safe-deposit box sparked a family dispute following her death in 2019. (Representational image)

A Texas woman’s decision to share access to her bank safe-deposit box with her niece led to a family dispute involving claims of $400,000 in cash, an eight-carat diamond ring and gold coins.According to the details of the case available on Justia, the disagreement began after Joyce Kezhaya died in August 2019, when her grandson emptied the box and reported finding only $16,000. Her niece later took him to court and won nearly $797,000 in damages. However, on Tuesday, a Texas appeals court overturned the award, ruling that she had failed to make her claim through the required process before her aunt’s estate was settled.At the centre of the case was a question that remained unresolved even after years of legal proceedings: what was actually inside the bank box? Kezhaya’s grandson, Nathanial Reggish, maintained that it contained $16,000, a family Bible and a few other belongings. But one of Kezhaya’s daughters told the court that she had seen a much larger amount of cash, along with valuable jewellery and gold coins.The woman who brought the case, Kezhaya Stephens, was Kezhaya’s niece. She had been given access to the box in May 2015, shortly after her aunt opened it. The bank’s agreement allowed either woman to use the box independently. Yet, according to the case document, Stephens had never opened it herself. She did not have a key and had no direct knowledge of what her aunt had stored there.

What happened after grandmother’s death?

Kezhaya had four children Jerry, Lexus, Valana and Tommy. In January 2019, after developing health problems, she prepared a will appointing her grandson Reggish, Valana’s son, to manage her estate. According to testimony presented during the trial, Lexus and Valana were the only beneficiaries named in the will.Her condition worsened later that year, and she was admitted to hospital in July. Reggish applied to become her temporary guardian, a request the court approved on August 7, 2019. Kezhaya died later that day.The following day, Reggish visited the bank with his mother, Valana. They opened the safe-deposit box and took away its contents. Lexus had been asked to come along but stayed outside the bank. Since the removal was not recorded on video, the court later had to rely on accounts given by family members.Reggish said he found $16,000 in cash and arranged for the money to be deposited in a trust account. The amount was subsequently recorded among Kezhaya’s estate assets.Meanwhile, Lexus told the jury that she had seen the items from the box afterwards in a hotel room. She described 40 bundles of cash containing $10,000 each, besides an eight-carat diamond ring and numerous gold coins. Her account suggested that the cash alone totalled $400,000.

Niece takes her cousin to court

Stephens said she had planned to visit the bank after her aunt’s death to open the box as a last goodbye. Instead, she learnt that Reggish and Valana had already taken everything out.Although her name was on the bank agreement, Stephens acknowledged that she had never seen the contents herself. Her belief about what the box held came from what other people had told her. She initially sought $382,000.She eventually sued Reggish and Valana, accusing them of wrongfully taking property, fraud, and conspiracy. Her case was based on her claim that the contents belonged to her rather than forming part of her aunt’s estate.Meanwhile, Kezhaya’s children were settling the inheritance. They reached an agreement on how the estate would be divided, and the court approved it in March 2021. The settlement included the $16,000 that Reggish had reported finding in the bank box. Reggish himself received no share of the estate.Stephens’s separate case continued even after the inheritance proceedings ended. In June 2023, the court decided to hear her claims against Reggish separately from those against Valana.A jury subsequently sided with Stephens, and the trial court ordered Reggish to pay her $796,905.89. But he appealed, questioning both the evidence of ownership and the way she had pursued her claim.

Appeals court cancels $796,906 award

The appeals court did not attempt to settle the competing accounts of what was inside the box. Instead, it examined whether Stephens had followed the legal process required to claim property connected to her aunt’s estate.Reggish argued that any such claim should have been made before the estate was closed. Stephens maintained that she had sued him as an individual, not as the person managing the inheritance, and that the rules governing claims against an estate therefore did not apply.The judges rejected that distinction. They found that Reggish had accessed the box while acting in his official capacity as Kezhaya’s temporary guardian. The money he reported finding had also been included in the estate and distributed through the inheritance proceedings.The court said Stephens should have formally presented her claim to the estate’s representative or the court clerk before the estate was closed. There was no evidence that she had taken either step. She had also not challenged Reggish’s authority to access the box or the distribution of its contents during those proceedings.As a result, the appeals court ruled that her claim against Reggish could not succeed under the Texas Estates Code. It cancelled the earlier award and ordered that Stephens receive nothing from her lawsuit against him.