In re Segur's Will

• Decision Date: 03 February 1899
• Citation: 71 Vt. 224,44 A. 342
• Court: Vermont Supreme Court
• Parties: In re SEGUR'S WILL et al.

44 A. 342

71 Vt. 224

In re SEGUR'S WILL et al.

Supreme Court of Vermont. Windsor.

Feb. 3, 1899.

Exceptions from Windsor county court.

Contest of proceedings to probate will of Ellen B. Segur by Willard B. Segur. From a decree in favor of proponent, contestant excepted. Judgment reversed.

This was an appeal from a decree of the probate court for the district of Hartford allowing an instrument as the last will of Ellen B. Segur. The appellant objected upon four grounds: (1) Defective execution; (2) incapacity; (3) undue influence; and (4) that one clause of the instrument was against public policy. The proponent traversed the first three pleas, and filed a general demurrer to the fourth. The court ruled that matters involved in the fourth plea should be determined by the court after the verdict on the first three pleas. The trial then proceeded on the first three pleas, and a verdict was returned allowing the will. After verdict, the court heard the questions arising under the fourth plea and the demurrer thereto, and sustained the demurrer, and adjudged said fourth plea insufficient, in that the clause referred to therein was not illegal or void as against public policy; to which ruling the contestant excepted.

W. E. Johnson and Win. Batchelder, for contestant.

Hunton & Stickney, for proponent.

THOMPSON, J. One issue on the trial below was whether Ellen B. Segur, the testatrix, was of sound mind at the time she executed the will in question. The evidence of the contestant tended to prove that she was subject to insane delusions as to her acquaintances, friends, and relatives, and that at such times she was unable to judge sanely in relation to the persons in respect to whom she held such delusions, and that she was laboring under such an insane delusion in regard to her son, the contestant, at the time she executed the will sought to be established. On this branch of the case the jury were instructed, among other things, as follows: "Take the witnesses of the contestant or the witnesses of the proponent, any of them, would they have been at a loss to have dealt with her in regard to this property on the occasion she made this will, under the circumstances that she made it? That is a good way to test whether, from all their testimony, and their judgment on it, where they give their judgment; that is, whether she was capable, competent or not competent, sound or unsound, testate or intestate. It is a good way to test their acts in comparison with what they say they consider her condition." It must be taken that the testimony referred to in this instruction was relevant to the issue as to the will being the product of an insane delusion of the testatrix in respect to the contestant. By this instruction, the jury must have understood that, if the witnesses considered the testatrix to be of such mental capacity that they would have dealt with her in regard to the property, then their testimony had no tendency to prove that she was laboring under an insane delusion as to the contestant, and that the will in question was the product of such delusion.

Evidence of delusions is not necessarily countervailed by evidence of business capacity as to ordinary business transactions. The fact that a man is capable of transacting...