Henderson v. Jackson

• Decision Date: 09 May 1907
• Parties: HENDERSON ET AL. v. JACKSON ET AL.
• Court: Iowa Supreme Court

138 Iowa 326

111 N.W. 821

HENDERSON ET AL.

v.JACKSON ET AL.

Supreme Court of Iowa.

May 9, 1907.

Appeal from District Court, Cedar County; B. H. Miller, Judge.

The opinion states the case. Affirmed.

J. G. France and I. J. Hamiel, for appellants.

Wright, Leach & Wright and C. O. Boling, for appellees.

WEAVER, C. J.

Jane Powell, a resident of Cedar county, Iowa, died on June 20, 1905, leaving a writing which purported to be her last will and testament. This instrument being offered for probate, the plaintiffs, who are heirs at law of the deceased, appeared and filed objections thereto. This pleading is too long to be quoted entire, but the substance thereof is as follows: That at the date of the will offered for probate, May 22, 1905, Jane Powell was the widow of one Benjamin Powell, who died on March 21, 1901; that prior to said last-named date the said Jane Powell at the instance and direction and under the influence of her said husband made and executed a will by terms of which she devised and bequeathed her entire estate to the heirs and relatives of the said Benjamin Powell, ignoring her own lawful heirs and blood relatives; that after the death of her husband the said Jane Powell executed the will now in controversy “for the purpose only of compensating those of her relatives who had cared for and nursed her during her last sickness and in consideration thereof, and that she desired to and would have revoked the provisions of the first will entirely and given her property to members of her own family if it had not been for the promise exacted of her by her husband when on his death bed to give the same to his heirs and relatives”; that under the “hallucination” that this promise was binding upon her, and her belief that she was powerless to change the will which he had dictated, and that “she would suffer the displeasure of her husband in the future” if she failed to carry out his wishes, she was induced to make the will offered for probate, and thereby dispose of her property to the exclusion of her own heirs, which she would not have done but for the undue influence thus exercised over her. To this pleading the proponents demurred on the ground, stated in substance, that the matters therein stated, even if true, do not constitute undue influence over the testatrix, or tend to show want of testamentary capacity on her part at the date of the will. This demurrer was sustained, and contestants refusing to amend or further plead, the will was admitted to probate, and contestants appeal.

1. It is first argued that the demurrer is too general, and should have been overruled as defective in form. It may be conceded that the demurrer is not as specific as it might have been, and yet we think it is not so general as to justify the court in overruling it on that ground. The second ground assigned is that “the contestants there named do not allege unsoundness of mind or undue influence in such a way or in such a degree as to give them any rights whatever.” The third ground stated is that “the objections show on their face that they are bottomed upon undue influence of a husband who died some four years prior to the execution of the will.” These propositions do, in our judgment, raise the specific points on which the proponents rely. The first and fourth grounds are very general, and if they alone were made the basis of the demurrer it should have been overruled.

2. Reduced to briefer terms, the allegation of undue influence on which the contestants rely is simply this, that the testatrix, four years after the death of her husband, felt herself bound by his request and by her promise made him in his lifetime that she made a will disposing of her property in a different manner than she would have done had the alleged influence not existed. In our judgment, this falls very far short of the undue influence which in law is held to invalidate a will. The pleading cannot be fairly construed as an allegation that the testatrix was the subject of an overpowering insane delusion which possessed her action in making the will. It depicts her rather as a person of supersensitive conscience, who conceived that she was bound to carry out so far as possible the desire her husband had expressed and the promise she had made to him in his lifetime. That she realized her right and her power to dispose of her estate as she might wish is demonstrated by the statement embodied in the pleading demurred to, that she did in fact revoke the old will which it is claimed was made under the undue influence of her husband and made another which, while including some of the principal features of the first instrument, did provide for legacies in considerable sums to her own immediate relatives, including some of the contestants. The fact that she did feel bound by the wishes of the deceased, and sought to carry them out so far as she would consistently with her own sense of justice to the relatives who had cared for and nursed her in sickness, has no tendency to show that in making the will she acted under moral or physical coercion, or that the will as made was not her voluntary act and deed. Just what is meant by the allegation of her fear that she might “suffer the displeasure of her husband in the future” is not clear, unless we may interpret it as a belief on her part that she would meet her husband in the world to come, and that her failure to show deference to his wishes here would tend to mar the pleasure of their communion there. But who may assume to say that such an article of faith is the product of a diseased mind, or that a person who acts upon it is the subject of undue influence? If a devout person, being about to prepare his will, makes it the subject of prayer, and believing that he has received divine help in planning the distribution of his estate, proceeds to act accordingly, would any court sustain a verdict which finds in this part alone a ground for invalidating such will? There are many persons whose soundness of mind and business sagacity none can doubt, who believe in the possibility of communication with disembodied spirits, and habitually take counsel from such sources with reference to their conduct in life. Is such a person incapable of making a valid will, and should his will be set aside as the product of an insane delusion, or as having been executed under undue influence, simply because he believes his act to have the approval of the inhabitants of the spirit land? We think not. Few men live who have not some desire, hope, or belief with reference to a life to come and the continued conscious existence in some form of their departed friends, and such faith has always been and doubtless will always remain a potent factor in the lives and conduct of nearly every member of our race. The particular form of faith which one espouses may seem to another unreasonable, or unphilosophical, or even ridiculous, but it is not for the Legislature nor for the courts to judge between them, or brand the adherents of any particular belief as lunatics or incompetents.

It is true that if there be...