Thompson v. Nichols

• Decision Date: 27 January 1919
• Docket Number: 786.
• Parties: THOMPSON v. NICHOLS.
• Court: U.S. District Court — District of Maine

254 F. 973

THOMPSON v. NICHOLS.

No. 786.

United States District Court, D. Maine.

January 27, 1919

Arthur S. Littlefield, of Rockland, Me., A. E. Hanson, of Malden Mass., and Eugene C. Upton, of Boston, Mass., for complainant.

Wm. P Whitehouse, of Augusta, Me., Robert T. Whitehouse, of Portland, Me., and Robert F. Dunton, of Belfast, Me., for defendant.

HALE District Judge.

This case is now before the court on defendant's motion to dismiss plaintiff's bill of complaint for want of jurisdiction. By the bill, the plaintiff, a citizen of Illinois, proceeds against the defendant, a citizen of Maine and invokes the jurisdiction of the court, on the ground of such diversity of citizenship. The bill alleges that the petitioner has been deprived of his distributive share as heir at law of the intestate estate of his aunt, Henrietta T. Nickels, late of Searsport, in this district, namely, of a part of that estate exceeding in value $3,000, and that he has been so deprived by reason of a violation of the right to due process of law, secured to him by the Constitution of the United States, and by the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments thereto; by the failure of evidence, that a certain instrument, alleged to be a copy of her will and executed by her in 1911, continued unrevoked as her will till death, notwithstanding the nonproduction of the original, and the consequent legal presumption of destruction; also by the failure of any evidence that she had destroyed the instrument in the belief that she had executed a later legal will, and in that, if there were such evidence, it would not be competent upon which to base a decree, there being no statutory authority for such procedure in Maine.

After the allegation of the diversity of citizenship, the plaintiff alleges that he is a nephew and heir at law of the intestate, who died in February, 1914, leaving the petitioner as one of the heirs at law, and entitled to one-sixth of the estate, which one-sixth amounts to more than $3,000; that the defendant is administering the estate under a decree of the probate court of Waldo county, Me., purporting to admit to probate an alleged will of the intestate, which was allowed in May, 1914, by the probate court of Waldo county, as the last will of Henrietta T. Nickels, without proof of the necessary jurisdictional facts, without process of law which would justify the decree, and without giving the plaintiff due process of law, as provided by the Constitution of the United States. The bill alleges that this decision of the probate court was sustained on petition brought in the probate court of Waldo county and appealed to the supreme court of probate and to the law court of Maine, and a third time sustained upon a second petition to annul, filed in the probate court of Waldo county, by a decree in that court dismissing the petition, the last decree being unappealed from.

The bill alleges that the original decree of the probate court of Waldo county, dated May 12, 1914, was made without due process of law, in that the decree was based upon the doctrine that, where a prior will is destroyed by the testator in the belief that he has legally made a later will, the revocation of the prior will by destruction is dependent upon, and related to, the valid execution of the later will, and, if no later will was in fact executed, then there is no revocation, and the former will may be admitted to probate by copy; that this doctrine is called the doctrine of dependent relative revocation, and that such doctrine has no recognition in the Law of Maine; and, even if it were so recognized by the law of Maine, there is no evidence that the instrument of November 9, 1911, the execution of which was approved by copy in the probate court, continued in the mind of the said Henrietta T. Nickels, unrevoked, as her will till death, or that she had destroyed the instrument in the belief that she had theretofore executed a legal will.

Among the prayers of the bill are: That this court will decree that the employment of the doctrine of dependent relative revocation in the courts of probate of Maine is beyond the statutory powers of the probate courts of Maine, and without due process of law; that the defendant has no legal right to the custody of the estate of Henrietta T. Nickels under a decree obtained without due process of law; that, under color of decree made without due process of law, the defendant has no right to withhold from the plaintiff his one-sixth of the property to which he is entitled as an heir at law; that the defendant, its servants and agents, be enjoined from enforcing or carrying out the decree of the probate court of Maine of May 12, 1914, said decree being made without due process of law; that the defendant be adjudged to be administrator de son tort; that the amount of the plaintiffs distributive share in the estate shall be established as a debt upon the estate, or a trust impressed upon it for the plaintiff's benefit; that the plaintiff be adjudged to be entitled to one-sixth of the estate after payment of debts and expense of administration; that, under an order of the court for the sale of assets of the estate, the administrator shall be obliged to sell listed stock first, and retain the Maine Belting Company stock and the unlisted stock for distribution in kind, or that the defendant shall be ordered by this court to go into the probate court of Maine and ask that court to declare the probated document of 1911, by alleged copy, to be null and void and revoked; and that the defendant be ordered to ask for a further appointment as administrator of the estate, by a decree made under due process of law.

The plaintiff's contention is that by this bill he is not seeking to vacate a decree of the probate court or of any state court, but that he is seeking to restrain the action of a void decree, made without due process of law; that the court has jurisdiction under its general equity powers, the controversy being inter partes, between citizens of different states; that the bill shows the unlawful taking of plaintiff's property without due process of law; that the authority of the state cannot be allowed to restrict the federal court of its authority conferred by the Constitution of the United States; and that the plaintiff should be allowed the decree of this court to protect his property, even though, in the protection of such property, a decree of the probate court is disregarded or set aside.

The defendant's motion to dismiss states ten different grounds of dismissal. The first ground of dismissal is that:

'The plaintiff's bill seeks to nullify and prevent the enforcement of a decree of the probate court admitting a will to probate, and to interfere with the custody and administration of the estate of a decedent thereunder, which are purely matters of probate, intrusted by the state, from which the authority to make and prove wills is derived, exclusively to the jurisdiction of the probate court, and as such are not within the jurisdiction of a court of the United States.'

If this court has jurisdiction over the matters stated in the bill, it obtains such jurisdiction from section 24 of the Judicial Code (Act March 3, 1911, c. 231, 36 Stat. 1091 (Comp. St. Sec. 991)), the material and applicable part of which section is:

'The District Courts shall have original jurisdiction as follows: First. Of all suits of a civil nature, at common law or in equity, * * * where the matter in controversy exceeds, exclusive of interest and costs, the sum * * * of $3,000, and * * * is between citizens of different states.'

Is the matter before us a suit of a civil nature, at common law or in equity? Or does it present a pure matter of probate, in that it seeks to prevent the enforcement of a decree of the probate court of Maine, admitting a will to probate?

The solution of the question does not require original reasoning but rather an examination of the leading cases upon a subject which has received much consideration. It is the clear doctrine of the federal courts that matters of pure probate are not within the jurisdiction of courts of the United States, for the reason that the authority to make wills is derived from the state; and the requirement of probate is a regulation to make a will effective. The leading case in this circuit, and one of the most important cases upon the subject in the federal courts, is In re Cilley (C.C.) 58 F. 977. In that case Judge Aldrich made a careful and exhaustive examination of the whole question. He began by inquiring what was meant by 'suits of a civil nature in law and in equity. ' He considered whether those words, as understood when the Constitution was framed, embraced proceedings for the probating of wills. He pointed out clearly that, by decisions in England and America, these words in the Judiciary Act and in the Constitution were not used in any colloquial sense, but in the broad, common, well-determined sense by which equity and common law are understood in this country and in England. He cited leading decisions of the federal courts, among others Tarver v. Tarver, 9 Pet. 174, 9 L.Ed. 91, Broderick's Will, 21 Wall. 503, 22 L.Ed. 599 (1874), Fouvrgne v. City of New Orleans, 18 How. 470, 15 L.Ed. 399, Ellis v. Davis, 109 U.S. 485, 3 Sup.Ct. 327, 27 L.Ed. 1006 (1883), and other cases, holding that it was the settled law of England at the time of the adoption of our Constitution, as well as at the time of the enactment of various Judicial Codes under the Constitution, that the Court of Chancery will not entertain jurisdiction of questions in relation to probate upon the validity of a will, which the ecclesiastical court was competent to adjudicate; but it would act only in cases where the...