In re Will of Blakely
| Decision Date | 03 February 1880 |
| Citation | 4 N.W. 337,48 Wis. 294 |
| Parties | IN THE MATTER OF THE WILL OF SARAH M. BLAKELY |
| Court | Wisconsin Supreme Court |
Argued December 18, 1879
APPEAL from the Circuit Court for Winnebago County.
The circuit court reversed an order of the county court of said county, admitting to probate the will of Sarah M. Blakely. From the judgment of the circuit court, this appeal was taken bye David Blakely, contestant of the will.
Reversed and cause remanded.
Charles E. Pike, for the appellant.
For the respondent, there were briefs by George W. Burnell, and oral argument by Mr. Burnell and Charles W. Felker.
The sole question in this case relates to the testamentary capacity of Mrs. Blakely to make the will executed by her on the seventh of April, 1876. The validity of the will is contested by her surviving husband, David Blakely heir-at-law. The county court admitted the will to probate but on appeal the circuit court decided that the testatrix was incompetent, by reason of mental unsoundness and insanity, to make a valid will, and reversed the order. The circuit court found from the evidence that Mrs. Blakely had been of unsound mind and chronically insane for a long time prior to the making of the will; that such insanity was of the type known as dementia, accompanied by insane delusions; and that the provisions of the will were influenced by and were the result of such insane delusions. Considerable testimony was produced on the trial, on the one side for the purpose of proving that the testatrix was of sound mind and memory when she made the will; and on the other side to show that she was not. This testimony was analyzed and discussed with much clearness and ability by counsel on both sides, on the argument. Owing to the pressure of other duties we shall be compelled to deal with the questions of fact in a summary way, doing little more than stating the conclusions we have reached upon the evidence. In our deliberations, however, we have endeavored to give due consideration to all the evidence bearing upon the question of the testamentary capacity of Mrs. Blakely prior to and at the time she made her will, and also to the remarks of learned counsel upon the testimony.
We may say at the outset, that it appears the testatrix was formerly the wife of one Mr. Pratt, a farmer, and resided in Corning, New York. In the latter part of the year 1869, she, then being a widow without children, married the contestant, a widower having several children and residing in the township of Neenah, in this state. Of her early history or former married life we know but little. One of her brothers, who was a witness for the proponent of the will, testified that when she was a school girl she used to laugh and cry easily; and this peculiarity in her character seems to have increased as she grew older. In the latter part of her life, she became large and gross. In the summer of 1873, she was ill from a protracted fever. After her recovery, she visited her relatives in Iowa, and returned to her husband's home in October. Some time previous to this visit, she had a large rupture--"umbilical hernia," as her physician, Dr. Barnett, says, who was called to treat her in the summer of 1874; and from this rupture she suffered at times severely. She was obliged to wear a truss, or supporter, which it was extremely difficult to keep in position on account of her weight. She had a stroke of apoplexy--or paralysis, as it is indifferently called in the testimony--about the 10th of December, 1875, which shock produced a depressing effect upon her spirits, causing frequent paroxysms of grief and crying, also affecting her speech, and making her lame in one side. Dr. Barnett attended her upon this occasion, making several professional visits, and, according to his recollection, though of this he was not positive, there were decided symptoms of improvement between his first and last visit. In April following, she made the will which is now contested.
The various provisions were dictated by herself to the magistrate who wrote it. She was not ill at the time, but could walk about the house, though lame. She talked with difficulty, but could generally make herself understood. Soon after making her will, she went to Iowa again to visit her relatives, where she had another paralytic stroke. She returned home about the 11th of September. On the 26th of that month, she was sent to the Northern Hospital for the Insane, and died there March 10, 1877. Up to the time she last returned from Iowa, her memory seemed good. During the year 1875, and certainly as late as February, 1876, she wrote clear, sensible and perfectly coherent letters to her relatives in Iowa about business matters and in regard to the management of some loans she had made in that state. To our minds, these letters are entitled to considerable weight as bearing upon the question of her mental condition and testamentary capacity prior to, and shortly before, making the will. They may not be conclusive upon the question whether she was sane when they were written; but it is not easy to believe they were the productions of a person stricken with chronic dementia--a type of insanity, according to the medical testimony, usually of slow progress, marked in its early stages by general impairment and enfeeblement of the intellectual faculties, and ending in mental decay and idiocy. It may be true, as claimed by the learned counsel for the contestant, that mental perversion and insane delusion do not exhibit themselves as soon in the correspondence as in the acts and conduct of the insane; but it seems hardly credible that one incapable of continued thought and attention, and who had nearly lost her intellectual powers, could have written some of these letters. But, to pass on, what is the evidence relied upon to show that the testatrix was incompetent, by reason of mental unsoundness and insanity, to make a valid will in April, 1876?
It is said by contestant's counsel, that the testimony overwhelmingly shows that her mind then was, and had been for a long time, full of insane delusions, not only upon particular subjects and in reference to a particular person, but upon all subjects. The facts relied on to prove unsoundness of mind and insane delusions on the part of the testatrix, before and at the time she made her will, are these: She was subject, the witnesses say, while she lived in Neenah, to frequent fits of crying and laughing without any apparent cause. Her conduct oftentimes was strange and unnatural. She was easily excited into passion and frenzy. At an early period she conceived a great dislike or antipathy for her husband, and every one connected with him, which continued to the end of her life. She was constantly complaining of him, and about his character, house and surroundings. She was very suspicious of him; accused him of stealing from her. She also accused others of taking her papers, opening her letters, and other things of like character. She believed her husband was meditating some fraud upon her rights, or intended leaving her or procuring a divorce. She took up the strange notion, on one or two occasions, that he had committed suicide, or was about to be murdered. Most of these suspicious apprehensions and fancies were doubtless groundless--the offspring of her peculiar temperament and nervous organization; for it is perfectly manifest, from all of the testimony in the case, that Mrs. Blakely was a very eccentric and peculiar person. She was excitable, nervous, flighty and hysterical. She was suspicious of all, discontented and unhappy. Her married life was unhappy from some cause; whether through her own fault or the fault of her husband, is left in the dark. She was dissatisfied with her house, which was not as comfortable, well finished and furnished as the one she had lived in before her second marriage. There were defects in the house well calculated to worry and annoy any careful, prudent housekeeper. She always insisted that her husband had deceived her in respect to his home and its surroundings, and as to his pecuniary circumstances. What foundation there was for this complaint or charge, can never be known. But, considering her idiosyncrasies, her bad rupture and poor health generally, she might have been dissatisfied and fault-finding with any one under the most favorable conditions. For true it is, she was probably not one of those happily constituted persons who make the best of everything, and meet the rough and smooth in life with an equal countenance. Possibly her husband was in some degree responsible for her discontent, irrational conduct and constant complaining. The real home life of husband and wife is concealed from the public eye, and it is not easy to discover who is really responsible for domestic discord. Not unfrequently harsh language, cold manner, indifference to the wants and feelings of each other, a lack of sympathy and kind attention, alienate affection and create dislike between them as effectually as the most flagrant acts of cruelty. But, however this may be, we do not discover anything in the conduct, or foolish caprices, or ungrounded suspicions of Mrs. Blakely, which satisfies us that she was under the influence of insane delusions at the time she made her will, or was then wanting in testamentary capacity. Everything said or done by her is quite consistent with mental health in a person of her peculiar organization and temperament.
In its leading features and the facts relied on to prove insane delusion and chronic unsoundness of mind, the case is very much like that of Chafin, 32 Wis. 557. Indeed Chafin's life and conduct were more marked by the exhibition of wild vagaries, absurd opinions and foolish...
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