Grimm's Estate

• Decision Date: 06 January 1890
• Parties: ESTATE OF GOTTF. GRIMM, DECEASED.
• Court: Pennsylvania Supreme Court

131 Pa. 199

ESTATE OF GOTTF. GRIMM, DECEASED.

Supreme Court of Pennsylvania.

Argued November 5, 1889.

Decided January 6, 1890.

Before PAXSON, C. J., STERRETT, GREEN, CLARK, WILLIAMS, McCOLLUM and MITCHELL, JJ.

APPEAL BY MARY GRIMM FROM THE ORPHANS' COURT OF ALLEGHENY COUNTY.

No. 208 October Term 1889, Sup. Ct.; court below, No. 350 September Term 1887, O. C.

Mr. John R. Large, for the appellant:

Marriage is a civil contract, and is and ought to be established upon the basis of any other civil contract. Admission by the parties to the contract is there amply sufficient. Here we have the admission of the parties, and also the fact that the contract was consummated by cohabitation as man and wife, which was not disputed. Such cohabitation, proved by living witnesses, is sufficient when not rebutted, to establish the fact of marriage: Covert v. Hertzog, 4 Pa. 145. There is nothing in the act of June 23, 1885, P. L. 146, forbidding the contracting of a marriage on the basis of a civil contract.

Mr. A. J. Kirschner, for the appellee:

Covert v. Hertzog, 4 Pa. 145, does not bear out the appellant's contention, but clearly decides that cohabitation is but presumptive evidence of the existence of the marriage relation. Cohabitation and reputation are but circumstances from which a marriage may be presumed, when they are conjoined: Yardley's Est., 75 Pa. 211; Hunt's App., 86 Pa. 296. When the relation is shown to be illicit at its commencement, it is presumed to continue so until proof of change: Hunt's App., 86 Pa. 294; Reading Fire Ins. & Trust Co.'s App., 113 Pa. 204. In the case at bar, we have simply a cohabitation of one week, with an agreement for a marriage ceremony one week later. The testimony of the appellant negatives the idea that any marriage took place in the decedent's lifetime. It was her misfortune that her intended husband died before the date fixed for the ceremony.

OPINION, MR. CHIEF JUSTICE PAXSON:

This case is peculiar. The appellant filed her petition in the court below, claiming to be the widow of Gottfried Grimm, and asking that $300 worth of property be appraised and set apart to her out of the estate of said decedent. The court below disallowed her claim.

The evidence upon which her claim to widowhood was based amounts to this: That the appellant and the deceased cohabited together as man and wife for one week prior to the death of the latter; that the marriage ceremony was to have been performed the following week, but that it was prevented by the sudden death of the decedent. The appellant was sworn and examined under objection, and her testimony was as follows: "I knew Gottfried Grimm since last Christmas. We lived together as man and wife a week before he died. The arrangement between us was that everything that was his should be mine, and my children get $300 each. We cohabited as man and wife. He acknowledged me in presence of others as his wife. The ceremony was to be performed the next week after he died. He was to have everything fixed the next...