Jones v. Witherspoon

• Decision Date: 05 May 1945
• Citation: 187 S.W.2d 788
• Parties: JONES v. WITHERSPOON.
• Court: Tennessee Supreme Court

187 S.W.2d 788

JONES v. WITHERSPOON.

Supreme Court of Tennessee.

May 5, 1945.

Rehearing Denied June 9, 1945.

Certiorari to Circuit Court, Madison County; Lamar Spragins, Judge.

Petition by Oscar Addison Jones for probate of paper alleged to be holographic will of Mrs. Mary Witherspoon Cole, deceased, wherein Ross Witherspoon filed notice of will contest and the cause was certified to the circuit court for trial of the issue devisavit vel non. A judgment of the circuit court sustaining the contest was reversed by the Court of Appeals and the cause remanded for new trial, and the contestant brings certiorari.

Judgment of Court of Appeals reversed, and judgment of circuit court affirmed.

Waldrop & Hall, of Jackson, for plaintiff in error.

David P. Murray and Carmack Murchison, both of Jackson, for defendant in error.

GAILOR, Justice.

This appeal derives from a will contest tried in the Circuit Court of Madison County. In the county court of that county, Oscar Addison Jones, the husband of a deceased daughter of Mrs. Mary Witherspoon Cole, filed a paper alleging it to be the holographic will of his mother-in-law. Ross Witherspoon, the brother of the alleged testatrix, thereupon filed notice of contest and the cause was then certified to the circuit court for trial of the issue devisavit vel non.

The holograph offered for probate appears as a paragraph of script at the bottom of a sheet of paper on which a will and codicil of 1917 had been written, signed and witnessed, so that on this single sheet appear:

1. The typewritten will of August 1917 executed by "Mrs. Mary Witherspoon Cole," and witnessed by W. H. Biggs, deceased, a lawyer of the Madison County Bar, and Miss Sarah Woodall.

2. A codicil to the foregoing which was identified as being in the handwriting of Mr. Biggs, but was signed by "Mrs. Mary Witherspoon Cole."

3. And at the bottom of the page the holograph here in question, which bears date January 14, 1937, and is signed by Mrs. Mary W. Cole."

Mrs. Mary Witherspoon Cole died in Madison County on September 29, 1937. She left one child, Gertrude Cole, who was about 40 years of age and unmarried at the time of the mother's death. She also left two brothers, Ross Witherspoon and Calvin (Bud) Witherspoon. After the death of her mother, Gertrude Cole married the proponent in this cause, Oscar Addison Jones, and lived with him until the time of her own death in February 1941. Gertrude never probated her mother's will, but without question by other members of the family took the entire estate as if she had inherited it absolutely and exclusively on her mother's intestacy. It was only after the repeated insistencies of the contestants that the proponent Jones finally offered the will of Mary Witherspoon Cole and the will of his wife, Gertrude, for probate six months after his wife's death.

By the will of 1917, Mrs. Mary Witherspoon Cole left her estate for life to her daughter, Gertrude, with remainder over to her two brothers, Ross and Calvin Witherspoon. By the alleged holographic will of 1937, on the other hand, the entire estate was left absolutely to the daughter, Gertrude Cole, by whose will, probated simultaneously with that of the mother, the entire property passed to the proponent in this cause.

The basis of the petition for contest is that the alleged holograph was a forgery made after the death of Mrs. Mary W. Cole; that it was not deposited for safe keeping as her last will, nor found among her valuable papers, and that the true and valid will of Mrs. Mary Witherspoon Cole was the document of 1917, which was signed and formally executed and witnessed in August of that year. A copy of this document is made an exhibit to the petition for contest.

On the trial in the circuit court the judge permitted the jury to consider both the will of 1917 and the alleged holographic will of 1937, and by their verdict the jury repudiated and refused to validate the will of 1937, and declared that the will of 1917 with its codicil was the true and valid will of the testatrix. The trial judge, after approving the jury's verdict, overruled motion for new trial by the proponent Jones, who then appealed to the Court of Appeals, and that court reversed and remanded the cause for a new trial. Contestant Witherspoon then filed a petition to rehear in the Court of Appeals, which being overruled, he has filed petition for certiorari in this Court. We have granted the petition, heard argument, and the cause is now before us for disposition.

Although several other assignments of error were considered by it, the Court of Appeals summarized the reason for its reversal as follows:

"It was therefore error for the trial judge to permit the contestant to offer the 1917 will for probate in the circuit court and to instruct the jury to return a verdict that it was the last will of the testatrix if they found that the alleged holographic will, which was the subject of the contest, was not the valid will of the testatrix. The circuit court was without original jurisdiction to admit it to probate."

However, the Court of Appeals said elsewhere in its opinion:

"The 1917 will is not the subject of contest in this proceeding and was not offered for probate in the county court. * * * It could not be admitted to probate in the county court until after this later will was set aside." (Italics ours.)

It is not to be doubted that prior to a contest, the jurisdiction for the probate of wills is exclusively in the county court, Code, sec. 10225, but here in his petition for contest, contestant stated solemnly under oath that the holograph was not the true will, and that the "paper writing" of 1917 with the 1918 codicil was "the true Last Will and Testament" and petitioner accordingly annexed a copy to his petition and marked it Exhibit "A". He prayed in his petition that the original document of 1917 (which was not in petitioner's possession) be certified to the circuit court "in order that an issue may there be made as to whether it is the Last Will and Testament of Mary W. Cole, deceased." We think in view of this prayer of contestant's petition that the Court of Appeals erred in holding that the 1917 will was not before the circuit court to be set up as the true will.

Now since the county court having already admitted the holograph to probate as the true will, could not thereafter admit the 1917 will to probate as such (as the Court of Appeals recognized), it followed the prayer of the petition and certified both documents to the circuit court for the determination of the true will on the trial of the issue "devisavit vel non." It does not appear from the opinion of the Court of Appeals that that court considered the case of Lillard v. Tolliver, 154 Tenn. 304, 285 S.W. 576, or the subsequent decisions of this Court approving that opinion; Bridges v. Agee, 167 Tenn. 324, 69 S.W.2d 891; Durell v. Martin, 172 Tenn. 97, 110 S.W.2d 316.

From the opinion in Lillard v. Tolliver, supra, which has become a fundamental part of our law of probate, it is clear that upon the filing of a will contest, the form of action is sui generis. It is no longer a common-law action, nor an action according to the forms of equity. It is a real action derived from the forms of the ecclesiastical courts of England, because the disposition of the res of the estate according to the will or wish of the deceased testator, not according to the suit or plea of plaintiff or defendant, becomes the fundamental and primary question and issue. The parties present, not their own rights, but their interpretation of the rights of the testator as evidenced by the will or wills. The paramount question that so embraces all others, is the proper distribution of the estate to carry out the will of the deceased testator. The proceedings in the circuit court on a will contest are not appellate from the county court but original. Murrell v. Rich, 131 Tenn. 378, 175 S.W. 420.

So it is proper that all who have an interest, remote or immediate, in the distribution of the estate should be made parties, and all documents of testamentary character or significance, may, under proper instruction and limitation by the trial judge, be introduced in the will contest and submitted to the jury for their consideration.

"Will. Contest. More than one will offered for probate. On an issue of devisavit vel non, it is proper to permit the propounding of other wills than the will first offered for probate, and against which a contest was instituted, that the jury under proper instructions may determine which of the wills is the will of the decedent." (Citing authorities.) Lillard v. Tolliver, 154 Tenn. 304 (headnote 2), 285 S.W. 576.

"Probate proceedings are not strictly suits...