141 So. 35 | La. | 1932
This is an action to set aside a will made in due form by the deceased before a notary and the requisite number of witnesses. The only grounds set up for alleged insanity of the deceased are that he was a very sick man at the time the will was made and for some time before that, and that he died some 12 hours after making the will; and the testimony of two physicians who never saw the deceased and testified only from the chart kept at the hospital where he died, that in their opinion the deceased was incapable of making the will which he did.
But the will itself bears no sign of an incapacitated mind; it merely passes over distant relatives and leaves the estate to close friends of long standing. And the testimony of the physicians who attended him, of the hospital attendants, of the friends who visited him, and of the notary and witnesses, is that the deceased was possessed of all his faculties when he made the will, and did in fact make it of his own free choice and desire.
The district judge saw no merit in plaintiff's contention; nor do we.
Plaintiffs' contention that the proceeds of certain life insurance policies form no part of the estate of the deceased and therefore should not be distributed under his will, is without the least merit. If they form no part of the estate, then plaintiffs, the legal heirs of the deceased, have themselves no legal right to those proceeds. But the fact is that the proceeds of life insurance policy *484
form no part of the estate of the deceased only when the policy is made payable to some designated beneficiary and not to the estate of the deceased. See Sherwood v. New York Life Ins. Co.,
What the court meant to say [in Succession of Aronson,