Langley v. Mayhew
| Decision Date | 26 June 1886 |
| Parties | Langley v. Mayhew and others. |
| Court | Indiana Supreme Court |
OPINION TEXT STARTS HERE
Appeal from Allen circuit court.
On petition for rehearing.
*157Robertson & Harper, for appellant. T. W. Wilson, for appellee.
Counsel for the appellant claim that we have, for reasons entirely unsatisfactory as well as wholly indefensible, declined to follow the conclusions logically resulting from our previous holdings, that widows are respectively entitled to an absolute sum out of the personal estate of their late husbands in addition to any provision which their husbands may have made for them by will, and plainly intimate that good faith requires that we shall apply the doctrine of our cases so in effect holding, and which were cited at *158the former hearing, to the case at bar as again presented. But we held before that the facts as found by the circuit court clearly established a release by the appellant of all claim against her husband's estate, independent by and outside of the provision made for her by his will, and that the release so established by the special finding of the facts took this case out of the range of those cases. To that holding we still adhere, and confess ourselves at a loss to understand how any well-instructed person could have come to any other conclusion. Besides, while the subject is again before us, it may not be amiss, not only to repeat, but to emphasize, our former intimation that some of the cases cited as above at the former hearing have gone to an extreme limit as to the rights of widows to an absolute sum out of their husband's personal estates, notwithstanding inconsistent testamentary provisions. We are in fact now prepared to go further, and to say that this court, as at present constituted, would not follow some of those cases to the extent to which they would lead us, and notably so of the cases of Nelson v. Wilson, 61 Ind. 255, and Whiteman v. Swem, 71 Ind. 530, but would, in a proper case, be inclined to accept the testamentary rule of construction laid down by the California case of Morrison v. Bowman, 29 Cal. 337, also cited and referred to in the principal opinion. The case of Wright v. Jones, 4 N. E. Rep. 281, also alluded to in the same connection, leads us unmistakably in that direction.
Conceding, nevertheless, all that is asserted in behalf of the merits of the appellant's claim as an original demand against the estate, the facts, as found at the trial, disclosed no such...
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Compton v. Akers
... ... was distinguished (p. 196) from Armstrong v ... Berreman, 13 Ind. 422, to be noticed later. In ... Langley v. Mayhew et al., 107 Ind. 198, 6 N.E. 317, ... it was held that when a widow accepts the provision made by ... the will which declares that it ... ...
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Dillman v. Fulwider
...255, and like cases. Some of these cases are overruled, and the others are criticized in Langley v. Mayhew, 107 Ind. 198, 6 N. E. 317, 8 N. E. 157, where the essential facts are very similar to those presented here. The will here expressly provides that the provision made for the widow is i......
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Dillman v. Fulwider
...255, and like cases. Some of these cases are overruled and others are criticized in Langley v. Mayhew (1886), 107 Ind. 198, 6 N.E. 317, 8 N.E. 157, where the essential facts are similar to those presented here. The will here expressly provides that the provision made for the widow is in lie......
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Archibald v. Long
...have been liable for the debts. See the following authorities cited by the appellant in support of this proposition: Langley v. Mayhew, 107 Ind. 198, 6 N. E. 317, and 8 N. E. 157;Hurley v. McIver, 119 Ind. 53, 21 N. E. 325;Draper v. Morris, 137 Ind. 169, 36 N. E. 714;Miller v. Buell, 92 Ind......