Boney v. Boney

• Decision Date: 16 October 1995
• Docket Number: Nos. S95A1428,S95X1429,s. S95A1428
• Citation: 265 Ga. 839,462 S.E.2d 725
• Parties: Mary S. BONEY v. Wimbric BONEY. Wimbric BONEY v. Mary S. BONEY.
• Court: Georgia Supreme Court

Page 725

462 S.E.2d 725

265 Ga. 839

Mary S. BONEY v. Wimbric BONEY.

Wimbric BONEY v. Mary S. BONEY.

Nos. S95A1428, S95X1429.

Supreme Court of Georgia.

Oct. 16, 1995.

Reconsideration Denied Nov. 9, 1995.

Wilson R. Smith, Newton, Smith, Durden, Kaufold & Rice, P.C., Vidalia, for Mary Boney.

L. Spencer Gandy, Jr., Gandy, Rice & Sundberg, P.C., Atlanta, for Wimbric Boney.

HUNSTEIN, Justice.

Mary Boney, the widow of Walter Boney, petitioned to probate the decedent's December 1979 will, in which she was named executor and sole beneficiary of the estate. Wimbric Boney, the decedent's adopted son, filed a caveat to the will, alleging that the will was the product of the decedent's monomania. The basis for this allegation stemmed from a November 1979 incident from which the testator had developed the insane delusion that he and the propounder had been insulted when the caveator's family had departed his home after refusing to eat food prepared by the propounder. A jury found in favor of Wimbric Boney and judgment was entered denying probate of the will. Mary Boney appeals from the judgment; Wimbric Boney cross-appeals, contingent upon reversal and remand for a new trial, from an evidentiary ruling made by the trial court. Because the evidence adduced did not authorize the jury to set aside the will for monomania, the trial court erred by denying the propounder's motion for a directed verdict and the judgment is reversed. The caveator's cross-appeal is dismissed as moot.

1. Monomania is a mental disease which leaves the sufferer sane generally but insane on a particular subject or class of subjects. Johnson v. Dodgen, 244 Ga. 422(1), 260 S.E.2d 332 (1979). "The very name 'monomania' implies partial insanity and excludes the idea of any sort of ratiocination as to the particular subject to which the partial insanity relates." Bohler v. Hicks, 120 Ga. 800, 802-803, 48 S.E. 306 (1904). "[Monomania] is not the result of any conclusion; the person does not arrive at his conviction because of any attempt either at reasoning or investigation." Brumbelow v. Hopkins, 197 Ga. 247, 249(1), 29 S.E.2d 42 (1944).

"The person so affected is subject to hallucinations and delusions, and is impressed with the reality of events which have never occurred and things which do not exist, and his actions are more or less in conformity with his belief in these particulars...[.] It is not every delusion which will deprive one of testamentary capacity. It must be an insane delusion. A definition of such a delusion which has been approved by this court is that it exists wherever a person conceives something extravagant to exist which has no existence whatever, and he is incapable of being permanently reasoned out of that conception. [Cit.] The subject-matter of the insane delusion must have no foundation in fact, and must spring from a diseased condition of mind...."

English v. Shivers, 219 Ga. 515, 518-519, 133 S.E.2d 867 (1963). A showing of hallucinations or insane delusions is essential to proving monomania. Whitfield v. Pitts, 205 Ga. 259, 272, 53 S.E.2d 549 (1949).

Monomania is distinguished from ill will, bad judgment, animosity, prejudice, erroneous conclusions from facts, illogical views, and other conditions of mind which can be co-existent with sanity. Russell v. Fulton National Bank of Atlanta, 248 Ga. 421(1), 283 S.E.2d 879 (1981).

An insane delusion does not mean a mistaken conclusion from a given state of facts, nor a mistaken belief as to the existence of facts. An erroneous conclusion of a sane person may arise from incorrect reasoning or from a deduction from information which he supposed to be correct.

Thornton v. Hulme, 218 Ga. 480, 485, 128 S.E.2d 744 (1962). Hence, we have recognized that

"[i]f the testator undertakes to make an investigation and arrives at the conclusion that a certain state of facts exists which in point of fact does not exist, such conclusion may be attributable either to a mistake in judgment or a mistake of fact, and will not be evidence of insanity ... [.]"

Hammett v. Reynolds, 243 Ga. 669, 671, 256 S.E.2d 354 (1979).

Where a person is induced by false evidence or by false statements to believe a fact to exist, or where, in consequence of his faith in evidence which is true, but which is wholly insufficient to prove the truth of what he believes, he believes a fact to exist which in reality has no existence, his belief may show want of discernment, or that he lacks ordinary power of discrimination, and is consequently easily duped, but not that his mind is unsound.

(Punctuation omitted.) Brumbelow v. Hopkins, supra at 249, 29 S.E.2d 42.

Applying these principles to the evidence adduced in the case at bar and construing that evidence most strongly in favor of the caveator, as the respondent on the motion for directed verdict, the evidence showed that the caveator was raised by the testator and his first wife, Cora Boney, who died in May 1974 after some 50 years of marriage. Three months later the testator married the propounder, his first cousin once removed and eight years his junior. Up until November 1979, the caveator, who lived with his family in the Atlanta area, frequently visited the testator, a Telfair County resident, and regularly attended the Boney Family reunions.

In November 1979, the caveator, his wife, and two younger children drove from Atlanta to attend a reunion, but arrived too late to eat at the clubhouse where the first part of the reunion was held. They went to the testator's house where the propounder and the testator's sister had brought some food from the clubhouse to make available to the caveator and another late-arriving relative. Because the caveator's children were hungry, they sat down at the dining room table. It is uncontested, however, that the children did not eat because the caveator's wife decided to leave with the children to dine at another relative's house. The family had arrived...