Edwards v. Davis
| Decision Date | 19 May 1908 |
| Citation | 84 N.E. 855,198 Mass. 441 |
| Parties | EDWARDS v. DAVIS. |
| Court | United States State Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts Supreme Court |
John
S. Patton, for plaintiff.
Bancroft G. Davis, for defendant.
This is an action brought by a son against the administrator of his father's estate to recover the reasonable value of the board and care of his father for the last six years or a little more of his (the father's) life, over and above what he (the plaintiff) had received therefor.
The plaintiff introduced evidence: That in the summer and fall of 1898 the father, then 78 years of age, asked the plaintiff to board and care for him during the rest of his life, and agreed in consideration thereof to pay him therefor $10 a month, to give him the rent of the two rooms previously occupied by the father in a tenement owned by the father, and on his death to devise to the plaintiff by will the whole tenement. That in pursuance of this contract the plaintiff boarded and cared for the father until he died in October 1904.
The father's property at his death consisted of this tenement worth $4,000, and about $3,000 in savings banks, less debts amounting to about $1,000. He left two children, the plaintiff and his sister Mrs. Lemaire.
The probate court allowed as the will of the father an instrument dated November 29, 1898, by which the tenement was devised to the plaintiff, $1,300 was bequeathed to Mrs. Lemaire, three pecuniary legacies amounting to $400 were made to grandchildren, and the residue was given to the plaintiff.
From the decree allowing the will Mrs. Lemaire took an appeal on the ground that the father was not of sound mind and that the will was procured by the undue influence of the plaintiff and his wife. After a hearing on this appeal was begun, a decree was entered in the Supreme Judicial Court, by consent disallowing the will.
From the charge of the presiding judge it would seem that the plaintiff then demanded damages from the administrator for breach of the contract in not devising the tenement to him and the administrator set up that the contract was not in writing, as required by Rev. Laws, c. 74, § 6.
Thereupon this action was brought under the rule applied in Kelley v. Thompson, 181 Mass. 122, 63 N.E. 332, and in De Montague v. Bacharach, 187 Mass. 128, 72 N.E. 938, to recover the reasonable value of the board and care over and above what had been received by the plaintiff by the payment of $10 a month and the rent of the two rooms.
At the trial of this action the plaintiff offered in evidence the will and it was excluded. In excluding it the presiding judge 'stated that whatever the reasons for the decree it (he) must stand by the decree.'
The plaintiff's contention in support of an exception taken by him to this ruling is that the will was evidence that the contract relied on by him was made.
In support of that contention he relies on two cases in Pennsylvania: Smith v. Tuit, 127 Pa. 341, 17 A. 995, 14 Am. St. Rep. 851, and Shroyer v. Smith, 204 Pa. 310, 54 A. 24. Both cases were similar to but not like the case at bar.
In the first case (Smith v. Tuit, 127 Pa. 341, 17 A. 995 14 Am. St. Rep. 851), the contract provided that the person who stood in the position of the plaintiff in the case at bar was to enter on the land forthwith and support the testator on the land in question. The will recited the contract and the will was offered in evidence during the life of the...
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