Dodge v. Lunt

• Decision Date: 20 May 1902
• Citation: 181 Mass. 320,63 N.E. 891
• Parties: DODGE v. LUNT.
• Court: United States State Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts Supreme Court

181 Mass. 320

63 N.E. 891

DODGE v. LUNT.

Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts, Essex.

May 20, 1902

COUNSEL

Robert G. Dodge and Albert P. Carter, for appellant.

Jacob S. Choate, for appellee.

OPINION

MORTON, J.

This is an appeal from a decree of the probate court allowing an account filed by the appellee as executor of the will of Nicholas B. Lake for the latter as administrator of the estate of his wife, Martha A. Lake. No account was rendered by the said Nicholas B. Lake during his lifetime. In the account filed by the appellee the property is accounted for as the property of Nicholas B. Lake. The question is whether that is a proper accounting, or whether the property should be regarded as assets of the wife's estate. The case was heard by a single justice, partly on agreed facts and partly on oral evidence and certain exhibits, and he affirmed the decree of the probate court. Martha A. Lake died in 1883 leaving a husband and three children,--a son and two daughters,--surviving her. The husband was duly appointed administrator, and gave bond with sureties, and filed an inventory, in which the property in question, consisting of deposits in five different banks in her name individually and as trustee in two savings banks in Newburyport was inventoried by him as belonging to her estate. Two of the children died shortly after she did,--the son unmarried, and without issue; and the other, a daughter, Florence E. Moody leaving a husband and one child. The appellant has been duly appointed administrator of Mrs. Moody's estate, and the remaining daughter has been appointed administratrix de bonis non of her mother's estate. In any event, Mr. Lake's estate is entitled to two-thirds of his wife's estate,--one-half as her heir, and one-sixth as his son's heir. The deposits consisted in large part--nine-tenths, as one of the witnesses testified--of checks drawn by Mr. Lake to the order of the savings banks or of the treasurer on an account kept by him in a national bank. And the question is whether they were gifts to his wife. It is to be noted that the checks were not payable to Mrs. Lake, and the mere fact that the money was deposited in her name individually or as trustee does not necessarily show that it was a gift to her. Booth v. Bank, 162 Mass. 455, 38 N.E. 1120. It may have been done by Mr. Lake for the purpose of multiplying accounts. That he was in the habit of multiplying accounts is shown by the fact that he had ten other bank books in these two banks. There was nothing shown as to the manner in which he dealt with the deposits during her life which required a finding that they were gifts to her. Sometimes she...