Lorings v. Marsh

• Citation: 73 U.S. 337,18 L.Ed. 802,6 Wall. 337
• Parties: LORINGS v. MARSH
• Decision Date: 01 December 1867
• Court: United States Supreme Court

73 U.S. 337

18 L.Ed. 802

6 Wall. 337

LORINGS v. MARSH.

December Term, 1867

APPEAL from the Circuit Court for the District of Massachusetts.

The 25th section of chapter 92, of the Revised Statutes of Massachusetts, A. D. 1860,—a re-enactment, essentially of earlier statutes,—thus enacts:

'When any testator shall omit to provide in his will for any of his children, or for the issue of any deceased child, they shall take the same share of his estate, both real and personal, that they would have been entitled to, if he had died intestate, unless it shall have been provided for by the testator in his lifetime, or, unless it shall appear that such omission was intentional, and not occasioned by any accident or mistake.'

With this statute in force, Mrs. Loring made her last will. She had, living at this time, a son (Josiah), who had, living, three children, Mrs. Loring's grandchildren, of course; and two daughters, one married (Mrs. Cornelia Thompson), but not having issue, and the other single, Miss Abby Loring. By her last will, Mrs. Loring left the bulk of her estate to two persons, Marsh and Guild, of Boston——

'To have and to hold the same to them and the survivor of them, and their and his heirs and assigns forever, to their own use, but in trust, &c. to hold, manage, invest and re-invest the same according to their best discretion; and to pay over one-third of the net income therefrom to my daughter, Abby, during her life; to pay over another third of said income to my daughter, Cornelia Thompson, during her life; and to pay over another third of said income to my son, Josiah, during his life; so that the said income shall go to them personally, and shall not be liable for their debts, or to the control of any other person; and upon the decease of my said children, severally, the shares of said income which they would continue to take if living shall be retained and invested by the trustees until the decease of my last surviving child, and shall then, with the principal, or trust fund, be disposed of for the benefit of the poor, in the manner hereinafter provided.'

The will proceeded:

'It is my will that when, upon the decease of all my children the trust fund is to be disposed of as aforesaid, the said Marsh and Guild, or their successors, as trustees, shall select and appoint three or more gentlemen, who shall be informed of the facts by the trustees, and shall determine how, by the payments to permanently established and incorporated charitable institutions, my wish to benefit the poor will be best carried into effect, and my gift may be made most productive of benefit to the poor; and that thereupon the said trust fund shall be disposed of and paid over, in accordance with the determination of the said gentlemen, certified by them in writing, to the trustees.'

The daughter, Mrs. Thm pson, having died during the life of the testatrix, Mrs. Loring made a codicil to her will, which, after reciting the former disposition of the income, proceeded:

'I revoke so much of my will as provides for the said division of the said income, and its payment in three parts; and order and direct that the said income be paid, under the conditions and provisions in my said will contained, to my daughter, Abby, and my son, Josiah, they me surviving, in equal shares during their joint lives, and one-half thereof to the survivor of them, during his or her life, it being my intention that my said two children shall have the whole of the said income in equal shares during their joint lives, if they shall both survive me, and the survivor of them one-half of the said income during his or her life.'

After this codicil was made (the testatrix, however, yet living), the son, Josiah, died, leaving three children. Soon afterwards, July 16th, 1862, Guild, one of the trustees named in the will, died; and, last of all, about four months after this, Mrs. Loring herself. Guild, having thus died in the lifetime of the testatrix, Marsh, the surviving trustee, appointed the committee of three persons whom the testatrix had designated as the persons to determine the charitable institutions among whom her estate should go, and the committee named them.

Miss Abby Loring, the single daughter of the testatrix, having died soon after her mother, unmarried and intestate the three children of Josiah Loring, these being the sole heirs-at-law of Mrs. Loring, the testatrix, now filed their bill against Marsh and others, to have the estate, or their share of it.

The grounds of the claim as made here, and in the court below, were:

1. That the omission of Mrs. Loring was 'unintentional, and occasioned by accident or mistake;' and the case so within the statute.

2. That the power conferred by the will upon the trustees, Marsh and Guild, to appoint persons to designate the objects of the testatrix's charity, had not been and could not, owing to the death of Guild, in Mrs. Loring's lifetime, be legally executed.

3. That the devise to the charitable uses was void, because, from defect of capacity to appoint, they were now uncertain and incapable of being ascertained.

In accordance with the law of Massachusetts,¹ oral evidence was taken on both sides as to the intention of Mrs. Loring to exclude her son's children. On the one hand there was the positive testimony of a girl or young woman, named Pratt, who stated that she had lived in Mrs. Loring's family for over seven years, as a 'companion' to Mrs. Loring, but whose services, Mr. Thompson, the son-in-law of Mrs. Loring, testified were purely servile. This person, who the record showed had been called by Mrs. Loring as a witness to her will, testified that she had often, very often, heard Mrs. Loring say that her son's children should not derive any benefit from her estate after her death; that this was said both when the will and after the will and codicil were made; the cause being a dislike which she had of her son's wife's family. On the other hand there was testimony by the same son-in-law, that Mrs. Loring exhibited no dislike to her grandchildren, the complainants, and never expressed to him any intention of the sort above mentioned. But beyond this there was no attempt to impeach the testimony of the first witness, and her character appeared to be fair.

The court below dismissed the bill.

Messrs. B. R. Curtis and Cushing, with Hutchins and Wheeler, for the appellants:

I. The first question is, whether the grandchildren are not entitled, by force of the statute, to the same share of Mrs. Loring's estate as they would have been had Mrs. Loring died intestate.

1. The time to which the question of omission applies is the time of Mrs. Loring's death. Not having then made any provision by her will, or anyc odicil for the issue of her deceased son, the case of the statute arises. She had made a will and left issue of a deceased child without having made any provision for them. Bancroft v. Ives,² is in point. That was the case of a son born after the making of the will, but it cannot be distinguished from the case of grandchildren, who became the issue of a deceased son, and so within the statute, by the death of their father after the making of the will.

2. It does not appear that such omission was intentional, and was not occasioned by accident or mistake.

(a) The evidence of intention to disinherit an heir should be such as to leave no reasonable doubt of the existence of a formed and settled intention. The common law always favors the heir, and one of its well-known rules is that an heir cannot be disinherited, even by a will, unless there are express words or a necessary implication to that effect. A fortiori, where the disherison is to be effected by parol evidence of mere declarations of the testator.

(b) It is the office of such evidence to supply the omission of a clause in the will declaring the intention of the testator to disinherit the heir.³ It is like the proof of the contents of a lost will by parol evidence, and the courts have held that this requires 'the clearest and most stringent evidence.'⁴

If what was actually written, in a duly executed will, cannot be proved to disinherit the heir but by 'the clearest and most stringent evidence,' a fortiori, the heir cannot be disinherited by an intention never written at all, unless such intention shall be made out by this same evidence.

3. The true inquiry is this: Does it appear, by the clearest and most stringent evidence, that the testatrix had a formed and settled intention to disinherit the children of her deceased son; and that by reason of such intention they were not named in her will or its codicil?

(a) Looking at the will and codicil. The will was made plainly on the assumption that the son would survive the testatrix, and on no other. And the conduct of the testatrix when Mrs. Thompson died is in accordance with this; for when she died an alteration was made. But none when the son died: yet by the death of the father his children stood in a new position, and it is obligatory on the other side to show that in making her will the testatrix foresaw and meant to act in regard to this new position; a thing which cannot be shown.

(b) Then the oral testimony is insufficient to make a case for respondents.

The false account which the only important witness gives of her relation to Mrs. Loring; the great improbability that that lady would make a young servant girl the confidant of her settled intentions respecting her only grandchildren, which she imparted to no one else; the lapse of time; the infirmity and treachery of the human memory, even under favorable circumstances, as to mere casual declarations,—which so many rules of law are framed to guard against, and judicial experience recognizes,—all combine not only to deprive the testimony of this witness of the character of 'the clearest and most stringent evidence,' but to place it below the level of ordinary credibility. No member or connection of the family,...