246 Pa. 58 | Pa. | 1914
Opinion by
Edgar W. Alexander died November 12, 1912, leaving personal property appraised at $332,956.87 and real estate worth about $10,000. He left to survive him but one child, a daughter, Nettie, born to him by his first wife, who died May 11, 1897. The daughter subsequently married J. Harry Moyer and became the mother of two children, Josephine and Dorothy. By a will, dated September 4,1912, and a codicil executed a month later, appellant’s father gave the bulk of his estate to his second wife, collateral relatives, step-children and charities. To each of his two grandchildren, Josephine and Dorothy Moyer, he gave $5,000. He practically disinherited his daughter and only child by the following clause in his will: “I give and bequeath to Mrs. Nettie I. Moyer, wife of J. Harry Moyer, the sum of One Thousand ($1,000) Dollars, on condition that should she take any exceptions to the provisions of this my will she shall not participate in my estate to the extent of One Dollar. I make this a condition in view of the unnatural conduct of said Mrs. Nettie I. Moyer towards her deceased mother as well as myself in her relation as a child and daughter.” The daughter appealed from the decree of the register admitting the will of her father to probate, and in a petition to the Orphans’ Court, in which she averred that the will, so far as it affected her, was the result of a delusion on the part of the testator, prayed for an issue to determine, (1) Whether he was the victim of a delusion with respect to her conduct towards himself and her mother, so affecting him as to have rendered him insensible to his parental obligations and to have caused him to execute the paper admitted to probate as his will; and (2) whether at the time he executed the same he was of sound and disposing mind. This appeal is from the refusal to award the issue prayed for.
A delusion which will render invalid a will executed as the direct result of it is an insane belief or a mere figment of the imagination — a belief in the existence of something which does not exist and which no rational person, in the absence of evidence, would believe to exist : Taylor, Executor, v. Trich, et al., 165 Pa. 586; McGovran’s Est., 185 Pa. 203; Bennett’s Est., 201 Pa. 485. The burden was upoix the appellant to show that such a delusion controlled the will qf her father and destroyed his freedom of action in disposing of his estate. In her effort to do so she submitted much testimony, the recital of which in detail will serve no useful purpose. It was shown by a number of witnesses that she had nursed her mother during a long period of sickness with the tender solicitude of an affectionate child; that her father and mother had both praised her for what she had done for them, and that after the death of her mother the father had exhibited great affection for her and her two children. In view of all the testimony as to this, it is difficult to understand why he left but $1,000 of his large estate to her, and it would almost seem that he must have been under an insane delusion in giving his reason for doing so; but there was evidence from which he may have believed that his daughter’s conduct towards himself and her mother had been unnatural. It was, therefore for him alone, being of sound mind, to pass judgment on that evidence, and, however harsh, unnatural and cruel his judgment may have been, it was not, in legal contemplation, a delusion — a mere figment of his
From the testimony submitted by the proponents it appeared that, for years before the testator’s death, the appellant had repeatedly spoken of his failings; that she had been reproached for doing so by those to whom she had complained of him, and that what she said about him had been repeated to Mm, leading him at times to say that what she had said of him had nearly made him crazy and almost ashamed to stay in Reading. It further appeared that she had charged her mother with over indulgence in drink, and this, too, was repeated to her father, who expressed his grief that she should have so accused her mother. In September, 1903, in response to a request from her, he sent her the earrings of her mother, and in an accompanying letter wrote that he pre
The burden was upon the appellant to show, by proof sufficient to sustain a verdict in her favor, that what she most naturally regards as the injustice of her father to her resulted from the delusion which she avers in her petition for the issue. After a review of all the testimony, we are constrained to say that she has failed to do so, and that we must concur in the following conclusion of the court below: “It may safely be asserted as a clear fact from the testimony that there were many stories afloat about Mr. Alexander which he believed to have been started by Mrs. Moyer. She, herself, tells her father not to believe what he hears without giving her a chance to defend herself, and he speaks of stories in his own letter about the earrings. Whether Mr. Alexander is to be condemned for listening to rumors and idle gossip or, perhaps, to false stories told by persons to discredit his own child, is not a question that this court is called upon to decide. The only inquiry is whether there is evidence from which a jury might reasonably infer
Decree affirmed at appellant’s costs.