Young v. Amy

• Decision Date: 31 May 1898
• Docket Number: No. 242,242
• Citation: 18 S.Ct. 802,171 U.S. 179,43 L.Ed. 127
• Parties: YOUNG et al. v. AMY
• Court: U.S. Supreme Court

171 U.S. 179

18 S.Ct. 802

43 L.Ed. 127

YOUNG et al.

v AMY.

No. 242.

May 31, 1898.

Le Grand Yound, for appellants.

Charles S. Varian, for appellee.

Mr. Justice WHITE delivered the opinion of the court.

By section 17 of the act of congress providing for the admission of Utah into the Union (28 Stat. 107, c. 138), power was conferred upon the convention called for the purpose o framing a constitution for the contemplated state to provide for a transfer of causes which might be pending in the territorial courts at the time of the admission of Utah into the Union to the courts of the state which were to be established. The statute, moreover, provided that 'from all judgments and decrees of the supreme court of the territory mentioned in this act, in any case arising within the limits of the proposed state prior to admission, the parties to such judgment shall have the same right to prosecute appeals and writs of error to the supreme court of the United States as they shall have had by law prior to the admission of said state into the Union.'

This cause comes here for review in virtue of the foregoing provisions of law. It originated in the probate court of Summit county, Utah territory, and involved a dispute over the distribution of the estate of Oscar A. Amy, who died intestate in the county of Summit, in Utah territory, on the 26th day of May, 1891. There were three classes of claimants to the estate: First. Adelia Young, Cedina C. Young, and Delecto Maston, who were maternal aunts of the decedent; they being the appellants on this record. Second. Royal D. Amy, Francis R. Jackson, and others, half-blood brothers and sisters of the deceased. Third. Jennie Amy, who is the appellee, claiming to be the wife of the deceased. Each of these different classes of claimants asserted that they were solely entitled to take distribution of the estate, to the entire exclusion of the others. In the probate court a decree was rendered in favor of the first-mentioned persons, the maternal aunts. From this decree an appeal was taken to the district court of the Third judicial district of the territory of Utah, where, after a trial de novo, the decree of the probate court was affirmed. From this decree a further appeal was prosecuted to the supreme court of the territory, and that court reversed the decree of the district court, and rejected the claims of those firstly and secondly mentioned,—that is, the maternal aunts and the brothers and sisters of the half blood; the court deciding that the wife of the deceased, Jennie Amy, was solely entitled to the entire estate. The decree of the supreme court of the territory was entered on December 21, 1895. 12 Utah, 278, 42 Pac. 1121. On the same day the maternal aunts, who were embraced in the first class, applied for and were allowed an appeal to this court; and on December 21, 1895, a bond for costs was filed in the supreme court of the territory, and was approved by the chief justice thereof. The citation on appeal, however, was not issued until about six months thereafter,—September 21, 1896. As in the meanwhile the state of Utah had been admitted into the Union, this citation was approved by the chief justice of the state of Utah, and on the same day findings of fact and conclusions of law were made by the supreme court. These findings, as the record certifies, were prepared by the late chief justice of the territorial court, and were adopted by the supreme court of the state of Utah as its own. From the findings thus made we have ascertained the facts above stated; and the findings, moreover, show that the controversy involved two issues: First, whether the brothers and sisters of the half blood were entitled to a distribution of the property left by the deceased, in preference to the maternal aunts; and, second, whether Jennie Amy, the appellee, was the wife of the decedent,—it being conceded that, if she was his wife, under the laws of Utah she inherited the property left for distribution, to the exclusion of his maternal aunts. The first question (that is, the right to distribution asserted in favor of the brothers and sisters of the half blood) may be at once dismissed from view, as the decree of the supreme court rejected their claim, and they have not appealed. The second question (that is, whether Jennie Amy, the appellee, was the wife of the deceased) depended upon the validity of a judgment of divorce against a former husban which had been rendered in her favor in 1879 in the probate court of Washington county, Utah; the marriage having been contracted in Utah, and the ground for the divorce being the abandonment of the wife by the husband. After this judgment of divorce, Mrs. Amy, on the 4th of August, 1886, was married to Oscar A. Amy, the deceased. The controversy, then, between the parties now before us, turned upon a claim advanced by the maternal aunts, that the judgment of divorce rendered between Mrs. Amy and her former husband was void; that she, hence, did not enter in a lawful marriage with the deceased, and was not entitled, therefore, as his wife, to his estate.

The record contains, as we have stated, findings of fact made by the supreme court of the state, and the conclusions of law which the supreme court held to be decisive of the issues which the case involved, and to which we shall have occasion hereafter to refer. The findings of fact and conclusions of law are immediately followed in the record by this recital: 'The foregoing is a statement of the facts found upon the evidence in the case, and the following are the rulings of the court on the admission and rejection of the evidence, which were duly excepted to by counsel for Adelia Young, Cedina C. Young, and Delecto Maston.' This is followed by a note of evidence showing what took place during the trial in the district court, which is also supplemented by the oral and documentary evidence offered in the trial of the cause. It appears that Mrs. Amy offered the decree of divorce between herself and her husband, and the complaint filed in the suit in which the judgment of divorce was entered. This was objected to on the ground that the documents were irrelevant, inasmuch as, without the summons issued in the cause, they proved nothing. The counsel tendering the proof thereupon declared that although the decree, on its face, recited the fact that the summons had been regularly issued and served, it was absent from the record; and he proposed by further evidence to show that the summons was regularly issued, and due notice thereof had been given to the defendant as the law required.

The court received the evidence subject to the objection; that is to say, it declared that it would pass on the objection when all the evidence in the case had been offered,—thus treating the objection as, in a measure, going to the effect. Mrs. Amy and her former husband, the defendant in the divorce proceedings, were then called; and testimony was given by both tending to show that the...