Heffner v. Heffner
Decision Date | 15 June 1896 |
Docket Number | 12,179 |
Court | Louisiana Supreme Court |
Parties | JACKSON HEFFNER ET ALS. v. JAMES HEFFNER, EXECUTOR, ET ALS |
Argued June 5, 1896
APPEAL from the First Judicial District Court for the Parish of Caddo. Land, J.
Harrison & Aston and D. T. Land, for Plaintiffs, Appellees.
Wise & Herndon, for Defendants, Appellants.
This appeal is from the judgment of the lower court annulling the will, olographic in form, of William Heffner, rendered in the suit of his collateral heirs seeking to set it aside. The ground of attack sustained by the judgment was that the will has no date. Omitting its dispositions the will is in this form:
The Code defines the olographic will to be that written, dated and signed by the testator himself. The date, signature and the entirety of the will in the handwriting of the testator are the essentials. C. C., Art. 1588. The testament in this form carries none of the guarantees the law provides in respect to wills in the other forms prescribed by the Code to prevent forgeries. The nuncupative will by public act is written by the public officer, appointed by law for the purpose; is attested by him and the witnesses, as the expression of the testator's wishes, dictated to the notary and signed by the testator. The nuncupative will under private signature requires witnesses and the fulfilment of other conditions required by law, to entitle such papers to credit as acts of last will. Civil Code, Arts. 1578, 1581, 1584, et seq. When the Code comes to prescribe the olographic testament, the notary, the witnesses and all forms of authentication are dispensed with, and the requirement is that such a will to have validity must be wholly written, dated and signed by the hand of the testator. The policy of the law to secure the true representation of the testator's wishes and guard against fraudulent wills is marked in the requisite of the testator's handwriting, including the expression of the date when he writes the paper and affixes the signature it bears. The date in the testator's handwriting is part of the evidence the law requires of the verity of the instrument. If the paper is forged, the date it must bear may furnish the means of detection. On any issue of the sanity of the testator the dates indicate and restrict the period of inquiry. There are other reasons suggested by the French authorities, all enforcing the date of the olographic will as indispensable to its validity. Napoleon Code, Art. 970; 3 Troplong, par. 1479; Coin Delisle, 542.
The date in its ordinary sense imports the day of the month, the month and the...
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