Price v. Hitaffer

• Decision Date: 05 April 1933
• Docket Number: 37.
• Parties: PRICE v. HITAFFER.
• Court: Maryland Court of Appeals

165 A. 470

164 Md. 505

PRICE v. HITAFFER.

No. 37.

Court of Appeals of Maryland

April 5, 1933

Appeal from Orphans' Court of Baltimore City; Harry C. Gaither William M. Dunn, and Philip L. Sykes, Judges.

In the matter of the distribution of the estate of Della A. Martin deceased; Annie C. Hitaffer, administratrix. From an order excluding the heirs or personal representatives of Walter J Martin, deceased, from participation in the distribution Harry L. Price, administrator of the latter decedent's estate, appeals.

Affirmed.

Argued before BOND, C.J., and URNER, ADKINS, OFFUTT, DIGGES, PARKE, and SLOAN, JJ.

Parlett Brenton, of Baltimore (Harry L. Price, of Baltimore, on the brief), for appellant.

Charles T. Le Viness, 3d, and Hall Hammond, both of Baltimore (Robert N. Baer, of Baltimore, on the brief), for appellee.

DIGGES Judge.

This appeal is from an order of the orphans' court of Baltimore City passed in the distribution of the estate of Della A. Martin, deceased intestate, which order excluded from participation in the distribution of said estate the heirs or personal representatives of Walter J. Martin, the husband of Della A. Martin, who, it is admitted and proven, did on the first day of October, 1931, shoot and kill his wife, and almost immediately thereafter commit suicide. These facts present the main question to be determined, namely: Can a murderer, or his heirs and representatives through him, be enriched by taking any portion of the estate of the one murdered?

The case is one of first impression in this state, and at the threshold this court is met with conflicting decisions of other courts of last resort in this country, which divergent views and opposite conclusions have been urged upon us by counsel for the respective parties in able briefs and forceful oral argument. These contentions represent the two views which this court is at liberty to take, each of which has been adopted by other courts, as exemplified and illustrated by the decisions to which our attention has been directed, either by counsel, or as a result of our own investigation. One line of decisions apply the common-law principle of equity that no one shall be permitted to profit by his own fraud, to take advantage of his own wrong, to found any claim upon his own iniquity, or to acquire property by his own crime, and hold that provisions of a will and the statutes of descent and distribution should be interpreted in the light of those universally recognized principles of justice and morality; that such interpretation is justified and compelled by the public policy embraced in those principles or maxims, which must control the interpretation of law, statutes, and contracts. The other and opposite view, as expressed in those decisions which reach a different conclusion, is that while they recognize the public policy of the common law as declared in the principles and equitable maxims above set forth, such public policy founded upon the common law has been abrogated and denied and a new and different public policy declared by the Legislature in the enactment of statutes to direct descents and distribution, or governing the execution and effect of testamentary disposition. Some of the courts in the last-mentioned group also rely upon constitutional or statutory declarations to the effect that conviction of crime shall not work a corruption of blood or forfeiture of estate. In this case, Mrs. Martin having died intestate, the appellant relies upon the language of sections 124 and 127 of article 93 of the Code, which provide: "124. When all debts of an intestate exhibited and proved or notified and not barred shall have been discharged or settled, or allowed to be retained as herein directed, the administrator shall proceed to make distribution of the surplus as follows. 127. If there be a surviving husband or a widow, as the case may be, and no child or descendant of the intestate, but the said intestate shall leave a father or mother, or brother or sister, or child of a brother or sister, the surviving husband or widow, as the case may be, shall have one-half." Mrs. Martin, the wife, was childless at the time of her death, and left surviving her one sister, and four nephews and one niece, the children of two deceased sisters of the intestate. The husband of the intestate survived her. The whole of the intestate's estate consisted of money amounting to $6,365.78, remaining for distribution to her next of kin after all debts and costs of administration had been paid. The appellant is the duly qualified administrator of the husband. According to the language of the statute above set forth, the facts were such as would have plainly entitled the husband to one-half of the wife's personal estate at the time his wife died with him surviving, and, he being now dead, his administrator would be entitled to the same amount, if the wife had died a natural death and the husband had survived. Does the fact of the criminal act of the husband in killing his wife prevent distribution of the wife's estate in the manner it would be distributed under normal circumstances? Article 27 of the Declaration of Rights declares "That no conviction shall work corruption of blood or forfeiture of estate;" and this declaration is also embodied in section 573 of article 27 of the Code, which is: "No conviction or attainder shall work corruption of blood or forfeiture of estate; the estate of such persons as shall destroy their own lives shall descend or vest as in case of natural death; if any person be killed by casualty there shall be no forfeiture in consequence thereof; an approver shall never be admitted in any case whatsoever, and a sentence of death shall not be executed in less than twenty days after judgment."

The contention is that these constitutional and statutory provisions have been violated by the order of the orphans' court. In the view that we take of the case, the constitutional and statutory prohibition against corruption of blood and forfeiture of estate by conviction has no application, because by reason of his murderous act the husband never acquired a beneficial interest in any part of his wife's estate. These provisions apply to the forfeiture of an estate held by the criminal at the time of the commission of the crime, or which he might thereafter become legally or equitably entitled to. In other words, it is a constitutional declaration against forfeiture for a general conviction of crime. Wellner v. Eckstein, 105 Minn. 444, 117 N.W. 830; Perry v. Strawbridge, 209 Mo. 621, 108 S.W. 641, 16 L. R. A. (N. S.) 244, 123 Am. St. Rep. 510, 14 Ann. Cas. 92; Box v. Lanier, 112 Tenn. 393, 79 S.W. 1042, 64 L. R. A. 458; Wharton on Homicide (3d Ed.) § 665. There can be no forfeiture without first having beneficial use or possession. One cannot forfeit what he never had. The surviving husband in the case before us, never having acquired any interest in his wife's estate, there is nothing upon which the constitutional or statutory prohibition can operate. By virtue of his act he is prevented from acquiring property which he would otherwise have acquired, but does not forfeit an estate which he possessed. In re Tyler's Estate, 140 Wash. 691, 250 P. 456, 51 A. L. R. 1088, Riggs v. Palmer, 115 N.Y. 506, 22 N.E. 188, 189, 5 L. R. A. 340, 12 Am. St. Rep. 819.

We next approach the question of whether or not section 127 of article 93 of the Code, which prescribes the persons entitled to distribution where a childless wife dies intestate leaving a surviving husband, compels such interpretation as would distribute the portion of the estate therein described to a husband who had murdered his wife. It is argued that, it being once ascertained that the wife died intestate, without children or descendants surviving her, and leaving surviving her husband, we must give effect to the words of the statute and award one-half of the estate to the husband, no matter how abhorrent to the principles of equity and morality as understood and practiced by the average citizen and almost universally applied by the Christian nations of the world. It is further argued that the enactment by the Legislature of our statutes of descent and distribution was a legislative declaration of the public policy of this state, overriding a contrary public policy embodied in the common law as a result of ages of wisdom, morality, and good conscience. In the development of such a public policy there may have been, and doubtless were, individuals who did not agree with or subscribe to such a policy, but the fact that it became a maxim of the common law demonstrates the overpowering force of its righteousness and the settled conviction of men throughout a very long period, derived from experience observation, and sound thinking, as to its inherent and incontrovertible worth. Speaking of statutes, Blackstone wrote: "If there arises out of them collaterally any absurd consequences, manifestly contradictory to common reason, they are, with regard to those collateral consequences, void. * * * Where some collateral matter arises out of the general words, and happens to be unreasonable; there the judges are in decency to conclude that this consequence was not foreseen by the Parliament, and therefore they are at liberty to expound the statute by equity, and only quoad hoc disregard it." 1 Blackst. (Lewis' Ed.) 91. An illustration given by this learned author is that if an act of Parliament gives a man power to try "all cases that arise within his manor of Dale," yet, if a case should arise in which he himself is a party, the act is construed not to extend to that, because it is unreasonable that any man should determine his own quarrel. In Hooper v. Creager, 84 Md. 195, 35 A. 967, 971, 1103, 36 A. 359, 35...