60 Vt. 502 | Vt. | 1888
The opinion of the court was delivered by
The contention is between the interpleading defendants, — Davis, as the representative of Polly Gould’s estate, and Cummings, as the representative of Henry M. Cummings’ estate, — and is, whether Polly Gould, December 13, 1881, possessed sufficient mental capacity to make binding-the transaction then entered into by her with the defendant, A. O. Cummings. She was then nearly ninety years old, and her mental faculties much enfeebled and obscured. "The measure of capacity required to make a binding contract was recently before this court sitting in full bench at the last General Term, in Stewart v. Flint, 59 Vt. 144. It is there held that the party must possess capacity enough-to enable her
“ She was laboring under the impression that she was going to get the whole of the Lucinda Cutler estate, amounting to about $17,000, when the ten years expired; and although Mr. Cummings, in the interview when said assignment was executed, told her that she would not, that the children of the brothers and sisters would share in it, she still persisted in the belief that she would get the whole of it, and Mr. Cummings could not make her see otherwise. The inducement held out to her for executing the assignment was that she could remain on the farm, and her desire to do so with John, as her companion, was the consideration in her mind that obscured all others. She understood that the signing of those papers obligated her to the payment of the indebtedness named therein, and pledged her interest in her sister’s estate for such payment. She could distinguish in her mind the difference between one sum of money and another; but she had not sufficient memory and mental vigor to understand,- in a reasonable manner, whether she owed the debts named in the assignment, or whether, in justice and equity, she ought to pay them.”
The statement of her capacity in this quotation from the report is not in substance changed nor varied by the other statements in the masters’ report. While she understood the effect of the transaction in which she was engaged, did she understand and comprehend its nature? We think she did not. She did not comprehend, and, in her then condition, could not, whether she owed the debts she was binding herself to pay, nor whether they were of such a nature that in justice and equity she ought to bind h ei-self to pay them. In other-words, she had not sufficient mental capacity to distinguish her own debts from the debts of others, nor to discriminate
The decree of the Court of Chancery is affirmed and .the cause remanded.