Davis v. Denny
| Decision Date | 17 January 1902 |
| Citation | 50 A. 1037,94 Md. 390 |
| Parties | DAVIS et al. v. DENNY et al. |
| Court | Maryland Court of Appeals |
Appeal from orphans' court of Baltimore city; George Savage and Myer J. Block, Judges.
Caveat by Charles L. Davis and others against James W. Denny and another, executors, etc., to contest the will of Sarah A.C Seaver. From a decree from an order dismissing the caveat caveators appeal. Reversed.
Argued before McSHERRY, C.J., and FOWLER, BRISCOE, BOYD, PAGE PEARCE, SCHMUCKER, and JONES, JJ.
Willis France & Homer, for appellants.
Wm. Pinkney Whyte and James W. Denny, for appellees.
This is an appeal from an order of the orphans' court of Baltimore city dismissing a caveat filed to the will of the late Sarah A.C. Seaver by the appellants, who are her next of kin. The petition of the caveators alleged fraud and undue influence in procuring the making of the will, and also a want of testamentary capacity on the part of the testatrix at the time of its execution, together with an ignorance by her of its contents. Much testimony was taken in the case, but it will be necessary for the purposes of this opinion to refer only to that portion of it bearing upon the issue of the testamentary capacity of the testatrix at the time of making her will, as we do not think that the charges of fraud and undue influence made in the caveat are sustained by the evidence. Having thus but the one issue to determine, it will simplify the discussion to first state the law applicable to that issue. This court has frequently been called upon to define the testamentary capacity which a testator is required to possess in order to make a valid will. Its decisions upon that subject have uniformly held, with slightly varying forms of expression, that such capacity consists in the possession, by the testator at the time of making his will of a full understanding of the nature of the business in which he is engaged, a recollection of the property of which he intends to dispose and the persons to whom he means to give it, and also an understanding of the manner in which he in fact disposes of it, and of the relative claims of the different persons who are or should be the objects of his bounty. Davis v. Calvert, 5 Gill & J. 301, 25 Am.Dec. 282; Colvin v. Warford, 20 Md. 367, 388; Higgins v. Carlton, 28 Md. 125, 92 Am.Dec. 666; McElwee v. Ferguson, 43 Md. 479; Brown v. Ward, 53 Md. 382, 36 Am.Rep. 422. Sanity and mental capacity are presumed by the law to exist in reference to making wills as well as to other transactions, and the burden of proof is upon those who allege their nonexistence. Brown v. Ward, supra; Higgins v. Carlton, supra; Tyson v. Tyson, 37 Md. 582. There is in the present case no suggestion of want of capacity on the face of the will. It is true it gives the entire estate to strangers, and does not mention the relatives or next of kin of the testatrix; but the record shows that she had survived all of her immediate family, and that her only relatives were in the collateral line, and lived at locations remote from her, and that she had seen none of them for more than 20 years, and had rarely communicated with any of them by letter. On the other hand, it appears that one of her principal legatees had been her faithful nurse and companion, and three of the others were not only her friends and neighbors, but were the descendants of a gentlemen who had been a most generous benefactor of the testatrix and her family in a time of great distress. Despite, however, the reasonable character of the provisions of the will itself, a careful examination of the evidence appearing in the record has led us to the conclusion that the mental power, and especially the memory, of the testatrix had become so enfeebled and impaired when she made her will that she had no adequate understanding of the business about which she was then engaged, or recollection of the property which she intended to dispose of, and was therefore not competent to make a valid will. She was in her eighty-second year when she made her will, and was the survivor of three children,--one brother and two sisters,--all of whom remained unmarried. Prior to 1868 the brother, William, purchased a leasehold house, No. 12 North Calhoun street, in Baltimore city, as a home for his mother and two sisters, and they resided in it as long as they lived. The mother died in 1868. One sister--Martha--died in 1888. The brother died in 1896; and, last of all, the testatrix died in 1900. William, who resided near Newark, in New Jersey, sent to the testatrix, as long as he lived, a small weekly allowance for her support. She had originally no property of her own, but she became entitled by way of distribution to the Calhoun street house on the death of her mother and sister and brother, and she also received an estate worth about $15,000 from her brother at his death in 1896. The property which she derived from her brother consisted of a farm in New Jersey, which was subject to a mortgage. Mr. Condit, a lawyer residing in New Jersey, who had been the friend and legal adviser of the brother during his life, and thereafter became the adviser and agent of the testatrix, sold the farm for her after her brother's death. On December 15, 1897,--about one year prior to the making by the testatrix of her will,--Mr. Condit wrote her a letter, which appears in the record, informing her that he had sold the farm to a Mr. Hartsorn for $40,000, for $21,000 of which Hartsorn had assumed the incumbrance already upon the property, and he had given a purchase-money mortgage for $15,000, and had paid the balance in cash. In the same letter Mr. Condit informed her that he would soon come to Baltimore, and get her views as to the disposition to be made of the proceeds of sale. He came to Baltimore to see her before she made her will, and brought her $3,000 in cash, which she deposited in a savings bank; and a business correspondence was kept up between them until her death, he sending to her currently an income of $700 or $800 yielded by the unpaid balance of purchase money for the farm and she executing the deed conveying the farm to the purchaser. She must therefore have been fully informed as to the nature and extent of her property in New Jersey not long before she made her will, and she would have known exactly what it was when she executed that instrument if her mind had been vigorous enough to retain the information. After her death the balance then remaining due on the mortgage was collected by Condit, and remitted to the appellees, as executors, who received from that source the net amount of $10,000. It thus appears that at the time of making her will the testatrix owned the Calhoun street house, which afterwards sold for $1,200, the $3,000 in the savings bank, and a balance of at least $10,000 of the purchase-money mortgage on the Jersey farm. When William died, his body was brought to Baltimore, and buried from the Calhoun street house, as that of the sister Martha had been, and the testatrix was present at the funerals of both the brother and sister. Thereafter she lived alone in the Calhoun street house until her own death. A colored servant--Cephas Johnson--came daily to the house, and attended to certain of her domestic wants; and a young woman--Minnie Friedley--always spent the night and part of the day with her. She was visited from time to time by her lady friends, and up to the time of making her will she, although somewhat of a recluse, went about the city occasionally on errands of business or pleasure. Those who knew her personally agreed that she was a person of more than ordinary intelligence and refinement, and was quite agreeable and entertaining in conversation, and some of them thought her very acute in reference to money matters.
Three classes of witnesses testified as to the testamentary capacity of the testatrix at the time she made her will. They were, first, nonexpert witnesses, consisting of friends and neighbors and dealers from whom she purchased her domestic supplies, and to one of whom she paid a ground rent on her house. The larger part of these persons thought her capable of executing a valid deed or contract, but some of them testified that they had noticed a decided failure of her powers after the death of her brother, and thought her incapable of making a valid deed or contract. We do not review this testimony in detail because of the inconclusive character of such evidence, and because we do not rest our conclusion upon these opinions, but upon facts hereafter to be stated. There is, however, a fact of importance to which quite a number of these witnesses testified, and that is that after the brother's death the testatrix frequently spoke of both him and of her deceased sister as still alive. On several occasions she sent meals upstairs for her sister saying that she was in the house, although she had in fact been dead for some years; and on December 23, 1898,--not three weeks after making her will,--she wrote a long and affectionate letter to her brother, as if he were still alive. This failure on the part of the testatrix to remember the death of her brother and sister was spoken of in the argument of the case as a delusion, and the law applicable to delusions was much discussed; but we do not think her state of mind in that respect amounted to that persistent or incorrigible belief in facts having no real existence which is the essential element of a delusion, for the witnesses almost always said that when you reminded her that her brother or sister, as the case might be, had been buried from her house, and she had attended the funeral, her memory would be refreshed, and she would reply, "I know he is dead," or "I remember she is dead," or would make some similar...
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