71 Mo. 553 | Mo. | 1880
The judgment in this case must be reversed and the cause remanded, because of what we understand to be an erroneous criterion adopted by the judge, of the testamentary capacity of the testator. The views of the court who tried the case without a jury were expressed in a series of instructions, which are as follows: 1. “Although the evidence may show that the testator had many lucid intervals, yet if it appears that even in such intervals he could not manage his own affairs or transact any business, then he was wholly unable to make a will. 2. Although it may appear from the evidence that the testator could and did work on the farm, and speak in a reasonable manner concerning such occupation and his work as a farm hand, yet, if it further appear that the said testator was unable to transact any business with other parties and to make any contracts and pursue the avocations and make the transactions of a common farmer, then said testator was unable to make such will, and the same must be rejected. 3. If it appear that, the testator never took charge of his own business affairs, and was incapable of doing so, and knew nothing of his means or property, and never managed his affairs, and was unable so to do, then he was incapable to make said will. 5. If the court believe from the evidence that the mind of the testator was so unsound or weak as to render him incapable of managing his affairs, it will ñnd that the testator had not sufficient capacity to make a will. 6. Although the court may believe that no influence was exerted, at the time of making the will, upon the mind of the testator, yet if it further believe that an undue influence had been acquired over his said mind, either through confidential relations existing between him and the devisee or othei’wise, and that such influence operated on the testator in the dispo
The following instruction asked by defendants was refused : “ The court sitting as a jury is bound to presume that Casper II. Rueggesiek was of sound mind and capable of disposing of his property by will at the time the will was executed, unless from the evidence in the cause it finds that he was insane or of unsound mind, and that the said will was made while in that condition,” to which action of the court the defendants excepted.
The facts of the present ease are somewhat peculiar, and may be briefly stated, not with any view to determine the questions of fact one way or the other, but to indicate the true criterion of testamentary capacity which we think ought to govern the case. The testator, it seems, came to Gasconade county twenty or thirty years ago, and lived with his brother and worked on his farm, without compensation, until his brother’s death, and continued to reside there with his sister-in-law, the legatee in this case. There is no pretense that he- was afflicted.with any form of insanity in the usual acceptation of that term, or of what writers on medical jurisprudence term dementia. But, according to the testimony of his sister, Anna Brinkmann, he had a sun-stroke in Illinois, and though before that
As to the proof of Buschmann’s appointment of guardian and his subsequent declination of the trust when he ascertained that the testator was a harmless old man, who was not likely to squander any property, it is difficult to see what it had to do with the case. The circuit court did not admit it as any proof on the subject of the testator’s sanity, but as having a tendency to affect the credibility of Buschmann’s evidence. How this could be, does not very clearly appear, since Buschmann had apparently, so far as the proof shows, no interest whatever in the matter one way or the other. It may be, however, that other evidence may be adduced, which, connected with the facts