Will Jones v. Marguerite Jones

• Decision Date: 22 June 1914
• Docket Number: No. 339,339
• Citation: 234 U.S. 615,58 L.Ed. 1500,34 S.Ct. 937
• Parties: WILL JONES, Plff. in Err., v. MARGUERITE JONES and Her Husband, Albert Jones
• Court: U.S. Supreme Court

234 U.S. 615

34 S.Ct. 937

58 L.Ed. 1500

WILL JONES, Plff. in Err.,

v MARGUERITE JONES and Her Husband, Albert Jones.

No. 339.

Argued April 30, 1914.

Decided June 22, 1914.

Messrs. W. H. Harrelson and W. P. Metcalf for plaintiff in error.

Mr. B. F. Booth for defendants in error.

Mr. Justice Lurton delivered the opinion of the court:

This is a question of collateral descent arising under the Tennessee statutes.

One John Jones, a colored freedman, died in 1889, the owner of a tract of 87 acres of land lying in Shelby county, Tennessee, upon which he and his wife had lived for many years. He died intestate and without issue. The title to the land was claimed by his widow, the defendant in error, Marguerite Jones, who has, since the death of John Jones, intermarried with the other defendant in error, Albert Jones. Her claim was rested upon § 4165, Shannon's Compilation of Tennessee Laws, which provides that if one die intestate, 'leaving no heir at law capable of inheriting the real estate, it shall be inherited by the husband or wife in fee simple.' The plaintiff in error, Will Jones, contested the claim of the widow, contending that the land passed to the surviving brothers and sisters of the intestate, under whom, through quitclaim deeds, he claimed the title. The widow's bill was for the purpose of canceling these deeds as clouds upon her title. The Tennessee court sustained her bill and adjudged that the intestate having died without issue, and without heirs at law capable of inheriting, his real estate passed to his widow under § 4165, supra.

The deeds denounced as clouds upon the widow's title were attacked upon a number of grounds, among them fraud in their procuration. The decree ordering their cancelation was apparently based only upon the ground that their makers, assuming them to be legitimate full brothers and sisters of the intestate John Jones, were sons and daughters of a born slave and themselves born slaves, and as such were not his heirs within the meaning of the Tennessee statutes of descent.

There is a Tennessee statute of descent which provides that the land of an intestate shall pass to his brothers and sisters in case the owner die without issue, and the contention is that if this statute preferring the brothers and sisters of an intestate dying without issue over the husband or widow be construed as applying only to brothers and sisters born free, it discriminates against those born slaves, and thereby violates that equal protection of the law guaranteed by the 14th Amendment to the Constitution.

This provision of the Tennessee canon of descent by which the brothers and sisters of an intestate dying without issue take his real estate is as old as the state, and comes from the common law. It does not distinguish in terms between brothers and sisters born free and those born slaves. Neither does it distinguish between those who are born bastards and those born in wedlock, and those who are aliens and those who are not. Nevertheless, neither a bastard nor an alien has inheritable blood, nor are they capable of inheriting as heirs unless by aid of some statute: 2 Kent, Com. *211; 2 Bl. Com. *249; Levy v. M'Cartee, 6 Pet. 102, 8 L. ed. 334. The civil status of slaves in Tennessee, as well as in other states in which slavery existed, was such as to disable them from inheriting or transmitting property by descent. Thus it was said: 'They cannot take property by descent or purchase, and all they find and all they hold belongs to the master. They cannot make lawful contracts, and they are deprived of civil rights. They are assets in the hands of executors for the payment of debts.' 2 Kent, Com. 11th ed. 278, *253; Jackson ex dem. People v. Lervey, 5 Cow. 397. Slaves, therefore, were not within the meaning and effect of the statutes of descent, and no descent from or through a slave was possible except as provided by some special statute. The rule was the same as to aliens and illegitimates.

After the emancipation of the slaves of the South the statutes of inheritance were extended in many states so as to confer upon the children of parents born in slavery the right to inherit from their parents. But these enlargements of the canon of descent extended only to lineal descendants and did not embrace collaterals. The Ten- nessee statute, which was claimed in the court below to be broad enough to embrace collateral...