Barkman v. Richards

• Decision Date: 16 July 1901
• Parties: BARKMAN v. RICHARDS. BENJAMIN v. SAME.
• Court: New Jersey Supreme Court

49 A. 831

63 N.J.E. 211

BARKMAN

v. RICHARDS.

BENJAMIN

v. SAME.

Prerogative Court of New Jersey.

July 16, 1901.

Appeal from orphans' court, Morris county.

Proceedings by David P. Barkman, executor, for the probate of the will of Jonathan Edwards Richards, deceased, in which Edith M. Richards, next of kin of deceased, filed objections. Prom a decree refusing probate of the alleged will, the executor and William H. Benjamin, sole beneficiary under the will, appealed. Reversed.

David P. Barkman and Willard W. Cutler, for appellants.

Mahlon Pitney, for respondent.

MAGIE, Ordinary. These two appeals were taken from a decree of the Morris county orphans' court, refusing probate of an instrument offered for probate as the will of Jonathan Edwards Richards, deceased. Barkman was named as the executor in said instrument, and Benjamin is the principal beneficiary thereunder. The appeals presented the same question, and were argued together. The legal principles applicable in this case are not in dispute. The appeals present only questions of fact, and require a determination whether there was error committed in the court below in its deductions from the voluminous evidence presented before it, or in the application of the settled and admitted principles of law. It is a matter of regret that I am not favored with any opinion of the court below indicating the grounds upon which it arrived at the conclusion that the instrument offered should not be admitted to probate. I will briefly express the conclusions I have reached:

1. At the execution of the paper writing the deceased was in possession of such testamentary capacity as he had, and his mind was not affected by the disease under which he was then suffering. The paper in question was shown to have been executed with all the formalities required by law to make it a valid testamentary disposition.

2. The proofs also indicate that the deceased possessed such degree of capacity as, under our liberal rules, enabled him to make a valid disposition of property by will. But the evidence also discloses that he was a man of weak mind and of an intellect below the average. He was infirm of purpose, and, although he had had the opportunity of education, he had (whether from inability to learn or from his reckless disposition does not clearly appear) acquired merely the rudiments of education. He possessed no business qualifications, and out of the small income which he had it is shown by the evidence that he had been led into ill-advised and absurd purchases. The evidence indicates what several of the witnesses express, that, while he had attained the state of a grown man, he remained a mere boy, childish in his disposition, and heedless in his conduct. It further appears that he was easily influenced and led by those who were in immediate contact with him.

3. As deceased possessed testamentary capacity, and the instrument was duly executed according to law as a will, it should have been admitted to probate, unless the claim of respondent (who is his sister and next of kin, and who filed a caveat against its probate) that it was not the will of deceased, but was produced by undue influence of the principal beneficiary, is sustained by the proofs. Primarily, the burden of establishing a charge that a paper writing was procured from the person who executed it by undue Influence rests upon the party who asserts it. But when a will confers a benefit upon one who occupied, in respect to the deceased, a position of trust and confidence, and particularly when the deceased was of weak mind and subject to influence, and the beneficiary has the opportunity to exert such influence, the burden is cast upon him to show there was, in fact, no undue influence. Dale v. Dale, 38 N. J. Eq. 274. The deceased...