Potter v. Jones

• Court: Oregon Supreme Court
• Writing for the Court: LORD, J.
• Citation: Potter v. Jones, 20 Or. 239, 25 P. 769 (Or. 1891)
• Decision Date: 06 January 1891
• Parties: POTTER v. JONES et al.

25 P. 769

20 Or. 239

POTTER v. JONES et al.

Supreme Court of Oregon

January 6, 1891

Appeal from circuit court, Clackamas county; FRANK J. TAYLOR, Judge.

(Syllabus by the Court.)

Delusions are conceptions that originate spontaneously in the mind without evidence of any kind to support them, and can be accounted for on no reasonable hypothesis. They have no foundation in reality, and spring from a diseased or morbid condition of the mind.

Where a person persistently believes supposed facts which have no real existence except in his perverted imagination, and against all evidence and probability, and conducts himself however logically, upon the assumption of their existence, he is, so far as they are concerned under a morbid delusion in that sense is insanity. But where the belief or aversion to the contestant was formed on an apparent cause, leading on his part to a view unjust and erroneous, this only shows an unfortunate error of judgment or a want of reasoning power but not an absolute want of intellect on the subject. It shows a bad judgment upon an insufficient state of facts, but not that his conclusion was formed without any foundation in fact, apparent or otherwise.

It is not enough that a delusion may exist, but its connection with the testator's will must be made manifest and shown to have influenced its provisions before the will can be set aside and declared void.

Where it was claimed that the testator was the subject of an insane delusion, but admitted to be of sound mind on all other subjects not connected with such delusion, but which delusion, the evidence disclosed,-assuming such delusion to have ever existed,-was not present influencing him when he executed the will, held, that the will was valid.

While it seems harsh and cruel that a parent should disinherit one of his children and devise his property to others, or cut them all off and devise it to strangers, from some unworthy motive, yet as long as that motive, whether from pride or aversion, spite or prejudice, is not resolvable into mental perversion, no court can interfere.

It is enough that the law recognized the right of the parent to make such testamentary disposition of his property as he chooses to select as the subject of his bounty, and in the exercise of this right he may have reasons satisfactory to himself why some of his children should enjoy his estate while others are excluded. Some may be more deserving than others,-more needful of help, for various reasons; some may have contributed largely to its acquisition. These and other reasons may exert an influence in favor of some and in exclusion of others.

W.W Thayer and C.D. & D.C. Lauterett, for appellants.

Ira Jones and D. Stuart, for respondent.

LORD J.

This was a proceeding instituted in the county court of Clackamas county by the contestant to have the order admitting to probate the will of her father, Cyrus W. Jones, deceased vacated and annulled, and the will set aside and declared void. The will was executed on the 19th day of January, 1887, and the testator died on the 20th day of August, 1887, leaving several children, to whom he devised his property, with the sole exception of the contestant, who was excluded from its bounty. The proceeding resulted in a decree vacating the order, and setting aside the will as void, which was affirmed on appeal by a decree of the circuit court, and from which this appeal is taken. The theory upon which the will is alleged to be void is that the testator, though conceded to be of sound mind upon all other subjects, was laboring under a delusion in relation to the legitimacy of his daughter, the contestant, causing him to entertain a violent hatred or insane aversion towards her, which rendered him wholly incapable of doing any legal act in which her interest was involved, and which so affected and influenced him at the time of the execution of his will as caused him to deprive her of all benefit in his estate. The record discloses that the testator was married to his wife on the 10th day of May, 1835, in the state of Ohio; that a few years thereafter they emigrated to Missouri, where they continued to reside until 1861, when they emigrated to Oregon, having at this time a family of 10 children, and settled in Marion county, on what is commonly known as "Mission Bottom." Here they continued to reside until 1865, when they started on a return trip to Missouri, taking with them two of their boys and three of their girls, one of whom is the contestant, and going by the way of California, where they stopped for a short time and where the two boys concluded to remain. The parents with these three daughters went on to Missouri, and after their arrival there his wife and the contestant of their own choice left him and went to Ohio, where they remained and never lived afterwards with him. The testator returned to Oregon in 1867 with the other two girls. He bought another farm in Marion county, where he resided for a few years, and then purchased the farm in Clackamas county, to which he moved, and where he was living when the will was executed and until his death. In 1872 he obtained a decree of divorce from his wife on the ground of desertion and cruel treatment. The evidence shows that the testator was a man of sensitive disposition and of a nervous and jealous temperament; that early after his marriage, and especially while he and his wife resided in Missouri, he became suspicious of her chastity, and entertained the belief that she was intimate with a man who met her near a certain spring for adulterous purposes, and that two of the children--the contestant and Calvin Jones--were the offspring of such adulterous embraces. He also expressed the belief that another person in Oregon, while they lived together here, was on intimate terms with her, and at one time sought to chastise him for his supposed conduct. This belief, however, in the infidelity of his wife and the illegitimacy of two of his children was not proclaimed from the housetop, or to every one; but with few exceptions, and those intimate friends, it was only communicated to his brothers. His daughters who lived with him are now married, and never seem to have heard of the matter or knew he entertained such a belief until the commencement of this suit. They knew that there was an estrangement between their parents and that they did not live happily together, but they never supposed the cause of it was due to any morbid delusion involving the chastity of their mother or the illegitimacy of any of the children. To avoid prolixity, we shall say our conviction from the evidence is that his wife was a chaste woman and faithful to her marriage vows, and that the two children named were not the spurious product of her adulterous embraces with another man; but the fact remains, according to the testimony of those to whom he confided his domestic troubles, that he always furnished some grounds for his belief. He identified the party and the place, and described the clandestine manner in which their improper meeting was affected. That such things could occur, or have occurred under less probable circumstances, will not be denied; they are only rendered improbable in the present instance by the absolute confidence expressed in her marital fidelity by her acquaintances. While, therefore, we shall regard this suspicion or belief of her infidelity to her marriage bed with its attendant circumstances as unjust and unworthy of belief, we cannot disregard the fact that there was the opportunity for the parties to have met at the spring, and that it might have occurred in reality for perfectly proper and innocent purposes or without evil design or any concert of action; yet to a man of the testator's sensitive and jealous disposition a trifling circumstance of this kind or a slightly imprudent act would incite his distrust and fill him with jealous suspicions. Whether there were any such visits to the spring near his residence, surreptitious or otherwise, by his wife and the suspected party while they lived in Missouri, there is nothing shown by the evidence, except his declarations, to the persons already referred to, that he had often seen such party go to the spring, when his wife would don her bonnet and go clandestinely to the same place. The evidence of those whose testimony leads to the conviction that his suspicions or accusations were unjust and unfounded rests not upon any knowledge of the facts one way or the other, but on their knowledge of her character and confidence in her chastity as inconsistent with such conduct. Mr. Sampson Jones and his wife, people of excellent character, and whose testimony is entitled to credit, to whom the testator perhaps talked and gave vent to his insinuations and suspicions with more freedom than any others, regarded his accusations of unchastity as unjust and untrue, and the circumstances which gave rise to them as too inconsistent with her character to be worthy of belief, and express the opinion that she was faithful to her marriage vows and the duties of a wife, and that in view of his conduct the testator was laboring under a delusion upon this matter. Stress and importance have been given to this phase of the case and the evidence, as it is the main starting point of his domestic woes and infelicities, of his suspicions of his wife's infidelity and the illegitimacy of his two children,--the contestant and her brother Calvin Jones. It is true that while they lived in Missouri and in Oregon between 1861 and 1865 their married lives were embittered by estrangements. Much of the time they refused to speak with each other or to conduct themselves in any way calculated to resume confidence and affection; and it was doubtless during some such...