159 A. 264 | Md. | 1932
It was decided by the lower court in this case that the defendant received from his mother, Wilhelmina Walkling, in her life time, certain funds with the understanding that they were to be distributed after her death among her children and the children of her two deceased sons, and, in view of the defendant's failure to make such a division, he was required by the decree to pay the sums therein specified to the respective plaintiffs as the intended distributees. The payments directed by the decree totaled $4,183.32. This was $500 less than the aggregate amount of deposits withdrawn by Wilhelmina Walkling from several banks in Westminster on November 15th, 1926, and transferred to the defendant, largely in the form of indorsed checks, but partly in cash, and deposited by him in other banks to his own credit. The defendant was not charged in the decree with the duty of distributing the whole of the amount thus received from his mother, a portion of it being treated as the share to which he was entitled. The withdrawal and transfer of the deposits by the original owner occurred just before she became an inmate of a home for the aged in Baltimore. A witness, who, with the defendant's daughter, accompanied his mother to Westminster on November 15th, 1926, explained the reason for the financial change then accomplished as follows: "In order to get into this home she was supposed to give all the money she had. She did not want to do that. I don't know who objected to it, whether she did or the children or who, but she decided $1,000 was enough. So she had to get that money out of her name and she went to Westminster to get it out of her account and closed the accounts and put it in someone else's name so the home knew nothing about it, and I knew that before I went."
One of Mrs. Walkling's bank accounts was closed by her check to the General German Home for the Aged, bearing the same date as the other withdrawal checks. In the course of his testimony, the defendant answered in the affirmative an inquiry as to whether he knew, before the money was withdrawn by his mother from her bank accounts, that it was to *190 be done in order that the home for the aged would receive only $1,000.
There was testimony offered by the plaintiffs, and admitted over objection, as to declarations by Mrs. Walkling that she had placed her money in the hands of the defendant with the understanding that he would distribute it among her children and grandchildren after her death. To the extent to which this testimony referred to statements made when the defendant was not present, we must disregard it, in view of prior decisions of this court. Duvall v. Hambleton Co.,
Decree affirmed, with costs.