Breen v. Breen’s Empirical Analysis
1918
Citation profile
10 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 10 later decisions — most recently February 1955
10 state decisions
Later decisions citing this case, by decade. The current decade is in progress, and our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so the latest bars are undercounted — not a real decline.
Relationships
Relies on Cross v. Benson · Sawin v. Osborn · Weaver v. First National Bank · Towle v. Towle · Keyes v. Hill
Most-quoted passages
The sentences later courts lift from this opinion, ranked by how many decisions quote each — the parts of the opinion doing the work. These counts are smaller than the citation total above because most of the 10 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“"The statute, of wills provides that ‘any married person having no children may devise one-half of his or her property to other persons than the husband or wife.’ (Gen. Stat. 1915, §11791.) But the widow of .the testator, having elected to take under the law and not under the will, is entitled to all the privileges accorded by the statute of descents and distributions, the same as if her husband had died intestate. (Gen. Stat. 1915, § 11798.) By that statute, the family of the deceased Owner — the widow and children, and if no children then the widow — occupying the homestead is entitled to hold it absolutely free from distribution under any of the laws of the state. . . . The constitutional guaranty does not undertake to control the transmission of title to property, neither is it restricted by the statutes regulating the transfer of title, for to whomsoever the title of the property may go, and whether it goes by descent or by will, the homestead right continues as long as the family occupies the home as a residence. The contention that the owner having disposed of his property by will the homestead right ends as to the property devised to the plaintiff, and that the rule limiting the distribution of homesteads prescribed in the statute of descents and distribution does not apply, cannot be upheld, since the statute of wills itself provides that if the widow elects to take under the law her rights [occupancy] will be the same as if her husband had died intestate. . . . The ”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majoritye.g. Campbell v. Durant
How this case has been treated — in progress
Whether each later court followed, distinguished, criticized, or overruled this decision. The treatment classification (task #35) runs highest-cited cases first and lights up here as it reaches this one.