Stege v. Stege's Trustee

• Citation: 237 Ky. 197
• Parties: Stege et al. v. Stege's Trustee et al.
• Decision Date: 06 March 1931
• Court: United States State Supreme Court (Kentucky)

237 Ky. 197

Stege et al. v. Stege's Trustee et al.

Court of Appeals of Kentucky. (Chancery Branch, Second Division.)

Decided December 19, 1930.

As Modified on Denial of Rehearing March 6, 1931.

1. Contracts. — Legal and mental capacity of party is necessary element of simple contract as well as testamentary disposition.

2. Contracts. — To make valid contract, there must be voluntary and complete assent of party having capacity to contract.

3. Contracts. — Assent to contract procured through "undue influence" will be deemed as not having been given, and instrument will be held void.

"Undue influence" is a species of fraud which courts do not undertake to define with precision.

4. Deeds. — Deed in nature of testamentary disposition, to be valid, does not require that mental strength in grantor necessary for deed as result of bargaining or dealing at arm's length.

5. Deeds. — Where grantor's mind is seriously enfeebled, less activity and inducement will be deemed undue influence, and less evidence to prove its effect required, than where mind is stronger.

6. Deeds. — Where deed is in effect testamentary disposition, same measurement of capacity and freedom as required for execution of will should be applied.

7. Deeds — Wills. — To constitute "undue influence," exercise of effort producing will or deed need not be by beneficiary directly, but may be through agency or third person, or one to keep another from inheriting.

8. Deeds. — Evidence held to require conclusion aged women's deed in trust for grandchildren was obtained by undue influence exercised by some children or children in law.

Overwhelming evidence showed grantor had, by reason of senility and ravages of disease, accentuated by great shock suffered from tragic occurrences relating to afflicted son, become very weak mentally, as manifested by hallucination nad other symptomatic actions. Gift was by means of intricate conveyance, avoiding law of advancements, constituting substantial portion of donor's estate, discriminating against those who by nature and by special manifestations of affection were peculiar objects of donor's bounty and bestowing bounty on young men, who, though of donor's own blood, had never evinced special devotion or attention to her and for whom she entertained no reciprocal relations of that degree, except perhaps one.

9. Appeal and Error. — Appellate court reaches own conclusion regarding facts in equity cases, though giving chancellor's opinion great consideration.

10. Appeal and Error. — In equity cases, if doubt exists in mind of appellate court regarding proper conclusion, chancellor's judgment will be adopted.

Appeal from Jefferson Circuit Court

DAVID A. McCANDLESS, MORTON K. YONTS and EUGENE HUBBARD for appellants.

HUMPHREY, CRAWFORD & MIDDLETON for appellees.

OPINION OF THE COURT BY COMMISSIONER STANLEY.

Reversing.

This is a suit by four of the children of Mrs. Elizabeth Stege, deceased, to set aside a deed to her grandsons. It is based upon allegations of mental incapacity and undue influence. Questions of fact are primarily involved, for it is elementary law that capacity — legal and mental — of the parties is a necessary and constituent element of a simple contract, as well as of a valid testamentary disposition of property; also that there must be voluntary and complete assent of one so capacitated, and, if an assent is given by reason of undue influence — a species of fraud which the courts do not undertake to define with precision — it will be considered as if it had never been given, and the instrument will be held ineffectual and void.

At the time the deed involved was executed, on November 22, 1922, Mrs. Stege was about 83 years old. She lived a little over a year thereafter. She suffered from well-advanced Bright's disease, enlargement of the heart, hardening of the arteries, and diabetes of such a stage as to cause a chronic ulcer on her body and cataracts on her eyes. She was very hard of hearing, and appears also to have been afflicted with rheumatism. Her death, however, was by pneumonia, which had been superinduced by broken ribs caused by a fall.

Mrs. Stege was a native of Germany and the widow of Christian Stege, who died in 1914, leaving an estate of more than $225,000. After his death, her three sons, Carl, Sam, and Louis, and her daughter, Miss Lillian Stege, lived with her. In 1919, Carl died and Louis married and left the home. Sam Stege was seriously afflicted with epilepsy having spells as often as two and three times a week. He was wholly incapacitated from labor and was the special object of his mother's care and devotion until his death, at the age of 42, in September, 1920. Before this occurred it appears that Mrs. Stege's mental condition had begun to be affected by the infirmities of age and disease. The afflicted son, Sam, became violent, and at the instance of Mrs. Stege's son-in-law, Capt. Chas. F. Huhlein, who was then a member of the board of safety in Louisville, a patrol of police came and removed him to jail, where he was kept about a week, and his mother was not permitted to see him. An inquest was held as to his sanity, which resulted in his being sent to the asylum at Lakeland, where he died about three weeks later. There is some evidence that, although the mother was sorely grieved over his death, it was no more than when she had lost other children. But the preponderating evidence is that these tragic occurrences greatly shocked her and seriously affected her mind. She was ill for a while thereafter, and until her death she continued grief-stricken. She would often refer to him, sit and stare at the floor, shake her head and moan, "Poor Sammy; poor Sammy." She would have crying spells, sometimes bordering on hysteria, and was often depressed and melancholy.

Mrs. Stege for several years before her death had the hallucination that her daughter Lillian — a school teacher since 1903 — was trying to poison her. She had a special lock put on her door, which she kept fastened when within, in expressed fear of her daughter. All parties agree — as embittered as some of them are — that there was no foundation in fact for this idea; and while there is some evidence to the contrary, we think it clear that Miss Lillian was devoted to her mother and was always kind and considerate of her wants and needs.

A number of ladies, who were with her quite a good deal, testify to many peculiar actions symptomatic of weakness of mind, e.g., bad memory, irritableness, anger without provocation; she was excitable, moody, peevish, often unable to carry on a connected conversation, suddenly changing from one subject to another. In playing cards, of which she was very fond, she would always bid on hearts whether she held any of those cards or not, and would become vexed and angry if another would outbid her. On one occasion while at the summer resort in Michigan, she accused the ladies with whom she played cards of stealing $500 from her. Later the money was found in her own pocket. She also related that on one occasion she had made a trip to Europe accompanied by her thirteen children, when she had given birth to only eleven children and the trip had been made with two of them before the others were born.

Two substantial business men of Louisville who knew Mrs. Stege well testify to her feeble mentality and to their experience with her indicating that condition. One of them stated she was not competent to attend to business affairs through lack of judgment and discrimination; that in his opinion she was probably able to handle matters of little consequence, but he considered her condition to be such that, if he were soliciting for charity and she offered to contribute $500, he would decline to accept it, although he would have accepted a $10 gift.

Every one of these lay witnesses expressed the opinion that Mrs. Stege at the time the deed was executed was not mentally capable of understanding its nature, to know the natural objects of her bounty and her obligations to them, and the value and extent of her property and to dispose of it in accordance with a fixed purpose of her own.

Dr. Curran Pope had known Mrs. Stege since 1913. She and her son Sam had been under his care. He testified that the son's death completely upset her; that she was irritable, emotional, and depressed to the point of hysteria, suffered at times from a state of delusion, having the idea members of her family were persecuting her, and without the slightest grasp of business affairs; her mental activity was very low, having more or less infantile tendencies. The doctor testified as to the diseases with which she suffered — already related — and stated they had a very deteriorating effect; that while Bright's disease does not cause delusions, where one is mentally unsettled it is liable to accentuate, develop, and bring it out; that because of the effect of hardening of the arteries on the circulation it also has a tendency to deteriorate the brain. At no time, testified Dr. Pope, when he had seen her, was she mentally capable or reliable in any sense of the word, nor competent, in his opinion, to execute an instrument of any kind. He expressed the professional opinion that in November, 1922, her mental condition was worse than when he had seen her previously, and therefore she was less likely to have that capacity.

Dr. Robert Wallace, Mrs. Stege's physician for several years before her death, stated she was suffering from the diseases enumerated, "and some others." Hardening of the arteries, he explained, leads to softening of the brain, and the poisons of diabetes affect the mind. She displayed the symptoms of melancholy, delusions, and the like stated, and persons in that condition, he testified, have "depressions of the soul." About a year before her death she had given him her age which showed her to be 86 years old when she died, and on another occasion had made a statement to him showing her to be...