Frederic v. Wilkins

• Decision Date: 05 June 1913
• Citation: 182 Ala. 343,62 So. 518
• Parties: FREDERIC v. WILKINS.
• Court: Alabama Supreme Court

62 So. 518

182 Ala. 343

FREDERIC v. WILKINS.

Supreme Court of Alabama

June 5, 1913

Appeal from Chancery Court, Mobile County; Thomas H. Smith Chancellor.

Bill by Annie Frederic, as administratrix of the estate of William Scholtz, against Mary T. Wilkins to annul a deed on account of incapacity and undue influence. Decree for defendant, and complainant appeals. Affirmed.

Inge &amp McCorvey, of Mobile, for appellant.

L.H. &amp E.W. Faith, of Mobile, for appellee.

SOMERVILLE J.

The bill is filed for the purpose of annulling a certain deed of land on the grounds of the mental incapacity of the grantor and of the exercise by the grantee of undue influence upon the grantor with respect to its execution. The determination of these two issues of fact, according to the weight of the evidence adduced, is all that was involved on the hearing below, and the appeal is to review the findings of the chancellor which were in favor of the respondent.

A careful examination of the evidence satisfies us that the conclusions of the chancellor are well grounded and his decree dismissing the bill free from error.

The legal evidence, while conflicting, falls very far short of satisfying us that the grantor did not have sufficient mental capacity to fairly understand the nature and consequences of the act in question, and the law requires nothing more than that. 22 Cyc. 1206B; Stanfill v. Johnson, 159 Ala. 546, 49 So. 223.

Had the chancellor considered the record of the lunacy proceedings, by which the grantor was committed to the insane asylum several years before he made the deed, it could not have affected the result, for all the facts were otherwise before him. But, those proceedings being purely ex parte, the order of commitment was not binding upon him nor upon his later privies in estate, and the record was properly rejected as res inter alios acta. McCurry v. Hooper, 12 Ala. 823, 46 Am.Dec. 280; Ex parte Trice, 53 Ala. 546.

The evidence does not show confidential relations between the grantor and the grantee, and there is nothing whatever to suggest any actual undue influence upon the grantor. The relations of friendship and social regard, however warm and cordial, without trust reposed by the weaker party and moral dominance by the stronger, are not alone sufficient to stamp with suspicion either a contract or a gift between the parties, as often declared by the courts. Kyle v Perdue, 95 Ala. 579, 585, ...