Hewitt v. Shipley
Decision Date | 01 November 1935 |
Docket Number | 19. |
Citation | 181 A. 345,169 Md. 221 |
Parties | HEWITT v. SHIPLEY. |
Court | Maryland Court of Appeals |
Appeal from Orphans' Court of Baltimore City; Philip L. Sykes William M. Dunn, and Leo J. Cummings, Judges.
Proceedings in the matter of the estate of Mary Betts Shipley, deceased wherein Samuel D. Shipley filed petition for revocation of order granting letters of administration to A. Saville Hewitt, and for the appointment in his stead of Samuel D Shipley as administrator. From an order granting the petition, A. Saville Hewitt, administrator of Mary Betts Shipley, deceased, appeals.
Affirmed.
Argued before BOND, C.J., and URNER, OFFUTT, SLOAN, MITCHELL, SHEHAN, and JOHNSON, JJ.
Michael E. Walsh and D. Eugene Walsh, both of Westminster, for appellant.
Robert F. Leach, Jr., of Baltimore, for appellee.
This is an appeal from an order of the orphans' court of Baltimore City passed April 3, 1935, revoking its former action in granting letters of administration to A. Saville Hewitt, brother of Mary Betts Shipley, late of Baltimore City, deceased, upon the estate of the latter and appointing in his stead Samuel D. Shipley, surviving husband of the intestate. This action was taken as a result of a petition filed by the husband, in which he claimed he had received no notice before such letters were granted his brother-in-law, and that he was legally entitled to administer and share in the estate of his deceased wife. The answer of the administrator denied the right of the husband to notice of the granting of letters, and rested its defense upon the proposition that he, the husband, had surrendered all his rights in the estate of his deceased wife by virtue of an agreement of separation between him and her dated October 3, 1910.
It is admitted that no notice was given the husband of the application for letters, that no divorce had ever been obtained by the parties, and that they had never lived together since the date of the separation agreement. At the hearing before the orphans' court, counsel for appellant were offered an opportunity to prove whether or not Mrs. Shipley had been represented by counsel in the preparation of the separation agreement; but no proof was produced. The question presented by the appeal is a narrow one, and its ultimate answer is entirely dependent upon the construction to be given the separation agreement in question, for it is conceded that if the husband had no interest in the estate of his wife, the action of the orphans' court in granting letters to some other person without notice to him is not improper. Code, art. 93, § 33. See, also, Dalrymple v. Gamble, 66 Md. 298, 7 A. 683, 8 A. 468.
The provisions of the separation agreement pertinent to this decision are as follows:
This court has from time to time been called upon to construe such agreements of separation, both prenuptial and postnuptial and, while no two are exactly alike, the general rule in this and other jurisdictions as to both classes seems to be that such an agreement will not be construed to bar the right of a surviving spouse in the estate of...
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