244 F. 361 | 4th Cir. | 1917
W. H. Gooch and Margaret C. Radcliffe •were married on October 14, 1915, at Rexington, N. C. Immediately before the .marriage an antenuptial contract was executed by which Gooch promised in consideration of marriage that he would pay or cause or provide to be paid one year after his death to the Old Dominion Trust Company $50,000 in trust to pay the interest to his wife, Margaret;, for her life or widowhood, and upon her death or second marriage to pay the principal as directed by his will, and upon failure of testamentary disposition to his children and their issue. Miss Radcliffe, in consideration of marriage and the provision for her above set out, agreed to accept from Gooch’s executor, administrator, or heirs the settlement in lieu of her dower rights and all other rights in Gooch’s estate, real and personal. On the same day husband and wife left on a trip to California. On this trip, one month after the marriage, Gooch was found in their apartment on a railroad train in Texas dead from a pistol shot supposed to have been self-inflicted. He left no will, and the only persons interested in his estate are his widow and his daughter, Annie W. Suhor, and her husband, George Suhor. Pending a controversy in the state courts as to the right of administration, the Old Dominion Trust Company was appointed curator of the estate. On January 24, 1916, the widow instituted this suit against Mrs. Suhor and her husband and the Old Dominion Trust Company to have the antenuptial contract annulled on the ground that Gooch obtained her signature to it by imposition and fraud. The District Court in a formal decree held that the allegations of the bill were sustained by the evidence, and set aside the settlement as fraudulent.
Three specifications of fraud are relied upon by Mrs. Gooch:
First. Imposition by Gooch in procuring her signature to the document without informing her of its meaning, and in' violation of his promise previously made to settle on her a home worth $10,000 to $12,000 and an. income of $3,000 to $4,000 a year.
Third. Suicide immediately after marriage by which he fraudulently cut off her prospects of enjoying his estate and receiving gifts from him.
Because of the death of Gooch and the consequent incompetency of his widow to testify in the cause, the record consists chiefly of the evidence of Mrs. Radcliffe, the mother of Mrs. Gooch, and their correspondence with Gooch. This correspondence, taken with the other evidence, reveals the characters and attitude of the parties to it. Gooch was an illiterate man of natural force, about 50 years old, who had accumulated about $240,000. He had been divorced from his first wife, on whom he had made a settlement of the interest on $36,000 for her life. Afterwards he had association with a woman named Beulah Dickerson, who had given birth to a child and imputed to him its paternity. He was fond of his daughter, Mrs. Suitor, and had made to her numerous valuable gifts. After his engagement to Miss Radcliffe he gave her generously jewels and other articles and $570 in money. He was petulant, suspicious, jealous, and capricious, and these characteristics, according to Mrs. Radcliffe, were made known to her and her daughter openly and very disagreeably after the engagement. The engagement began in 1913, was broken in July, 1914, and renewed in July, 1915. After the renewal Gooch wrote a letter which Mrs. Radcliffe and her daughter considered highly insulting. He several times postponed the marriage, and entered into it with reluctance on the day last fixed only after Mrs. Radcliffe had- insisted that the marriage should take place at the time appointed or not at all. No invitations were issued for fear Gooch would be unwilling to marry at the time appointed. One probable cause of this reluctance was anxiety over his former relations with Miss Dickerson and apprehension from threats of personal violence made by her. But the correspondence shows that another cause was his doubt of a happy result. Great as were his faults and sins, his acts of generosity go far to repel the suggestion that he would contrive a scheme to defraud the woman from whose companionship he hoped to derive happiness.
Miss Margaret Radcliffe was an educated teacher of music, 24 years oí age at the time of her marriage. She was of social standing far above Gooch, and apparently had little, if anything, in common with him. Her mother, also an educated teacher, was her companion and intimate adviser in the affair. The letters of Gooch to Mrs. Radcliffe and Margaret, their letters to him, and the personal associations described by Mrs. Radcliffe indicate an engagement of bicker-ings and disagreements. Mother and daughter knew of his divorce and of his fear of Miss Dickerson, though apparently not of any sexual relations he may have had with her. The affair with Miss Dickerson they treated as the subject of merriment and contempt, rather than of objection, or of sympathy for Gooch’s distress over it. Gooch’s
Without offering direct proof of concealment by her husband or his failure to inform her of the value of his property, Mrs. Gooch relies on the proposition that there was such gross disproportion between her expectancy in her husband’s estate and the settlement made upon her as to cast upon Gooch’s heir and personal representative the burden of proving full disclosure by Gooch of the value of his property, and that they have failed to make this proof. At the date of the contract the net value of Gooch’s personal estate was about $200,000, and of his real estate about $40,000. If no marriage settlement had been made, the complainant, as his wife, would have had an expectancy of
In all the cases we have examined, where such an inference was held to be warranted, the disproportion was far greater. For instance, in the case of In re Enyart’s Appeal (Neb.) 160 N. W. 120, the husband was worth $225,000, and the settlement on the wife in full of all interests was equivalent to annual interest on $10,000 at 5 percent, for 20 years. In Taylor v. Taylor, 144 Ill. 436, 33 N. E. 532, the settlement was $2,000 at death of husband out of an estate of $41,000. In Barker v. Barker, 126 Ala. 503, 28 South. 587, it was $500 out of an estate of $10,000 of a man 87 years old. In Slingerland v. Slingerland, 115 Minn. 270, 132 N. W. 326, the settlement provided for the payment of $5,000 out of an estate of $225,000; and the money was never paid. In Hessick v. Hessick, 169 Ill. 486, 48 N. E. 712, the settlement was $300 on death of husband out of an estate of about $40,000; and in Achilles v. Achilles, 151 Ill. 136, 37 N. E. 693, $200 a year for life or widowhood out of an estate of $20,000.
Contracts have been sustained in cases where the disproportion was far greater than in the present case. In Landes v. Landes, 268 Ill. 11, 108 N. E. 691, the settlement was $10,000 and the estate $130,000; in Settles v. Settles, 130 Ky. 797, 114 S. W. 303, $2,000 out of an estate of $20,000; in Smith’s Appeal, 115 Pa. 319, 8 Atl. 582, $1,200 a
We conclude there is no such gross disproportion between the settlement on Mrs. Gooch and her expectancy as to warrant the presumption of constructive fraud by concealment or failure to disclose the value of the husband’s property. Besides, against such an inference there is positive and unassailed proof of full disclosure. The contract itself recites that “the subject of their pecuniary condition, situation, their prospects and desires, their mutual rights and obligations,” had been fully considered. Smith’s Appeal, 115 Pa. 319, 8 Atl. 582. The statement attributed to Miss Radcliffe by Mr. Patteson that she had seen a copy of the contract and knew all about it standing uncontra-dicted, taken in connection with Gooch’s reputation for wealth and his style of living, is also strong affirmative evidence that the plaintiff was informed as to the value of the property of her intended husband.
To sum up, the preponderance of the evidence supports these inferences; There was no direct evidence of fraud or misrepresentation; the settlement was not so grossly disproportionate to the wife’s expectancy when all the circumstances of the parties are considered as to raise the presumption of fraud; the settlement was adequate for a comfortable support for Mrs. Gooch after the death of her husband and during widowhood. She knew of its terms; and the recitation of the instrument itself in connection with Gooch’s reputation for wealth shows that there was no concealment. Mrs. Gooch married in full acceptance of the terms of the settlement, taking the chances of further beneficence from her husband; and Gooch would not have contracted the marriage but for her acceptance, leaving his other property free for such disposition as he might choose to make. The suicide of Gooch was a misadventure not anticipated by either party, and therefore it could not be an act of fraud affecting the validity of the settlement. The mere hope of future beneficence unsupported by a promise was not a property right, and therefore the blasting of that hope by suicide could not be a fraud.
The point that the settlement cannot be carried out by Mrs. Suhor as the heir of her father is without merit, since the contract provides
Reversed.