Schneider v. Manning

• Decision Date: 17 June 1887
• Parties: SCHNEIDER and another v. MANNING and others.
• Court: Illinois Supreme Court

121 Ill. 376

12 N.E. 267

SCHNEIDER and another

v.MANNING and others.

Supreme Court of Illinois.

June 17, 1887.

Error to Lake county.

James S. Murray, for Schneider and others, plaintiffs in error.

Whitney & Upton, (Robert Hervey of counsel,) for Manning and others, defendants in error.

CRAIG, J.

This was a bill in equity, brought by Ellen Schneider and Edward H. McGlennon, to contest the will of Hugh McGlennon, deceased. The will was executed on the sixth day of September, 1879; McGlennon died on the first day of January, 1885; and on the twentieth day of June, 1885, the will was admitted to probate in the county court of Lake county. The deceased left an estate of the probable value of $50,000, consisting mainly of real estate situated in Lake county and in the city of Chicago. He owed but few debts. The deceased left, as his only surviving heirs, a widow, Aun McGlennon, and three children, Ellen Schneider, Edward H. McGlennon, and Sarah F. Hagan. By the terms of the will the testator, after directing the erection of a family vault, and the payment of his debts, devised to his wife all of his personal property, and to his daughter Sarah F. Hagan the remainder of his estate, except the sum of $100, which he devised to his daughter Ellen Schneider, and a like sum to his son, Edward H. McGlennon. On the thirty-first day of July, after the will was probated, this bill was filed, in which it is alleged that the said Hugh McGlennon, at the time of executing the will, was not of sound mind and memory, but, on the contrary thereof, for a long time prior to and at the time of the said execution was in a state of partial insanity, and affected with and subject to insane delusions concerning his wife and children. The bill contained other allegations, but it will not be necessary to refer to them here. The widow, the executor, and Sarah F. Hagan were made defendants to the bill, and they put in an answer in which they denied all the material allegations of the bill as to unsoundness of mind and partial insanity of the testator. An issue was formed, as is provided by the statute, which was tried before a jury, and a verdict was rendered in favor of the validity of the will, upon which the court rendered a judgment. To reverse the judgmentof the circuit court the complainants sued out this writ of error.

Many witnesses were called, and testified in the trial, as to the soundness and unsoundness of the testator's mind at the time the will was executed, but we have not the time, nor would it serve any useful purpose, to go over the evidence of each witness in detail. We have, however, examined all the evidence introduced on the trial; and while it may be conceded that the testator was eccentric, and entertained strange notions upon some subjects, yet the great preponderance of the evidence showed that he was a man of vigorous mind, that he had capacity to transact all ordinary business, and was fully competent to make a will. It was not claimed by the contestants that the testator was insane, but the claim was that, at the time the will was executed, Hugh McGlennon was laboring under an insane delusion respecting his children Ellen Schneider and Edward H. McGlennon, and in consequence of such insane delusions he was incompetent to make a will. Certain declarations made by the testator after 1869, to the effect that the son had threatened to kill the whole family; that Schneider had tried to induce his wife to obtain a divorce, and secure large alimony; that he would break any will the testator might make that did not suit him; that there was a plot between Schneider, his wife and son to kill him; and other declarations of a similar character,-are relied upon to establish an insane delusion. Whether the testator had sufficient cause for making all or any of the declarations attributed to him we shall not stop to inquire. There was some evidence introduced tending to prove that he had ground for making the charges, or at least some of them, that were made against the members of his family; but, independent of this, the proponents of the will called over 30 witnesses, some of them prominent business men of the city of Chicago, who had known the testator for many years, businessmen in the city of Lake Forrest, near where the testator lived for several years, and prominent men in Waukegan, where the testator had transacted business. Those witnesses, with great unanimity, state that they had observed no change in the manner of the testator; that they noticed nothing in his conduct or conversation that indicated that he was of unsound mind; that they regarded him perfectly competent to transact ordinary business; and that he was mentally competent to dispose of his property by deed or will. Whatever doubt may have been raised in the minds of the jury by the evidence of the contestants of the will in regard to the mental capacity of the testator to make a will was overcome and removed by this evidence. A man may become prejudiced against some of his children, and that, too, without proper foundation; and, because he may make unjust remarks against them,-remarks not warranted by the facts,-it does not follow that he has insane delusions, or that he is devoid of testamentary capacity. If such was the rule, but few wills would be able to stand the test, where an unequal disposition of property has been made by a testator among children. A man has the right to dispose of his property by will in such manner as he may desire, and the fact that he may give more to one child than another does not affect the validity of a will, or prove that the testator is incompetent to make a will.

It is also claimed that instruction No. 5, given in behalf of defendants, is erroneous. It is as follows: ‘The court instructs the jury that insanity or unsoundness of mind, within the meaning of the law in this case, is a disease of the brain affecting the mind to such an extent as to destroy a man's capacity to attend to his ordinary business, or to know and understand the business he was engaged in when making a will; and unless the jury believe, from the evidence, that Hugh McGlennon's brain was diseased to such an extent that he did not have mind and memory sufficient to enable him to transact his ordinary business, such as renting his real estate, settling accounts, buying and selling property, and to know and understand the business he was engaged in at the time he made the will in dispute, you should find that said will is the will of the said Hugh McGlennon.’

Where a bill has been filed to impeach a will on the ground that the testator was of unsound mind at the time the will was executed, the doctrine announced in the instruction has been approved in a number of cases decided in this court.

In Meeker v. Meeker, 75 Ill. 262, it is said it is a rule of law that a person who is capable of transacting ordinary business is also capable of making a valid will. It is not required that he shall possess a higher capacity for that than for the transaction of the ordinary affairs of business. A man capable of buying and selling property, settling accounts, collecting and paying out money, or borrowing or loaning money, must usually be regarded as capable of making a valid disposition of his property by will. The same doctrine was announced in Yoe v. McCord, 74...