Allen v. Elliott

Decided March 5, 1918

California Supreme Court · decided 1918-03-05

Will—Contest of Will—Mental Capacity—Burden of Proof.—On the contest of a will on the ground of insane delusions amounting to unsoundness of mind, the burden is on the contestant to prove the existence of the alleged delusions. Id.—Insane Delusions—Burden of Proof, How Sustained.—To prove the existence of insane delusions on the contest of a will, the contestant must not only show that the delusions had no foundation in fact, but also that there was no evidence, however slight or inconclusive, of any fact upon which the belief could be founded. Id.—Mental Alienation — Perverse Opinions and Unreasonable Prejudices.—In questions of testamentary capacity, courts should be careful not to confound perverse opinions and unreasonable ’ prejudices with mental alienation. Id.—Insane Delusions of Testator Respecting His Children— Questions to be Considered by Jury.—Where, on the contest of a will, it was claimed by the contestant that the testator had entertained insane delusions respecting his daughters (the contestant and her sister), their moral character, and their conduct toward him as well as the extent of the provision he had already made for them by gifts of money and property, and their financial circumstances, it was proper for the jury to consider the testator’s nature and temperament, his advanced age, the circumstances under which statements attributed to him were made, and the general conduct of his daughters toward him. Id.—Evidence.-—Where the belief entertained by the testator, in such case, that his daughters had large sums of money loaned out and in bank was the chief delusion alleged to have contributed to the making of the will, evidence which tended to establish such fact was competent to show that such belief was not a delusion, but founded in truth, and also as tending to show that the testator had in fact, as declared by him, made ample provision for his daughters. Id.—Opinion Evidence—Evidence as to Testator’s Appearance—. Objection to Form of -Question—Unprejudicial Error.—Where, on a witness for contestant being asked what, if anything, tie had observed in the testator’s appearance, conversation, or any other thing pertaining to him, before making of the will, which would cause or induce him to believe that the testator was not entirely rational, the court sustained an objection to the form of the question, saying that if the witness was called as an intimate acquaintance for the purpose of testifying as to the testator’s sanity, he must first state whether he believed the testator to have been of unsound mind, as provided in subdivision 10 of section 1870 of the Code of Civil Procedure, which provides that upon a trial, evidence may be given of “the opinion of an intimate acquaintance respecting the mental sanity of a person, the reason for the opinion being given,” and counsel for contestant, refusing to comply with the court’s suggestion, restated the question in substantially the same form, and a like objection was sustained, it was the duty of counsel to reframe the question in compliance with the suggestion of the court, or to have clearly indicated to the court that the evidence sought was as to acts and conduct, and to establish the existence of insane delusions, and not having done so, he was in no position to complain. Id.—Declarations of Testator’s Intentions in Conformity With Will.—Evidence for the proponent of the testator’s declarations prior to the making of the will that he intended to leave his property to beneficiaries named therein was properly admissible. Id.—Evidence of Testator’s Opposition to a Daughter’s Marriage.—■ Evidence for the proponent of the will in such ease that the testator was opposed to the marriage of one of his daughters, a sister of the contestant, was properly admitted although the marriage occurred after the making of the will, the testator having left his property to nephews instead of to his daughters, who were his next of kin. Id.—Cross-examination—Impeaching Witness by Proof of Inconsistent Statements.—Where, in such case, the contestant had testified that her father had been insane since 1897, and her sister had testified that he was always insane, the trial court properly admitted, on cross-examination, as impeaching testimony, a verified answer of the contestant in a suit brought by the father against the daughters to set aside a conveyance made to them by him in which answer the contestant alleged that in 1909, at the time of the execution of the deed, her father was mentally sound, and a verified answer by the sister in the same suit adopting the former answer “as fully as if she had originally joined therein.” Id.—Evidence—Testamentary Capacity—Testator’s Acts and Conduct.-—In a will contest involving testamentary capacity of the testator, both parties are properly permitted great latitude as to the conduct, acts, and declarations of the testator, both before and after executing the will. Id.—Presumption as to Instructions.—While such evidence is important only as it bears upon the condition of testator’s mind at the very time of the execution of the will, it must be assumed that the jury was properly instructed as to the application of the facts proved, where the contrary is not shown. Id.—Rebuttal Evidence—Exclusion not Erroneous.—Where some of the proponent’s witnesses, in testifying to the testator’s sanity, referred to certain specific acts on his part, subsequent to the making of the will, in connection with a building erected by him on a lot owned by him in San Francisco, on which he executed a mortgage for part of the money used in the construction, it was not error to exclude testimony offered as rebuttal, by which the contestant sought to show by the architect who drew up the plans the extent to which the testator looked after the construction, since the evidence was not in rebuttal of any facts testified to by the proponent’s witnesses. Id.—Will as Result of Delusion—Burden of Proof.—To set aside a will on the ground of insane delusions on the part of a testator, the contestant must establish three things; namely, the existence of the beliefs, the fact that there was no evidence, however slight or inconclusive, which could have produced the beliefs, and that the will made was the result thereof.

Relies on Scott v. Gerrish

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1918-03-05

How this case has been cited

Cited by 14 later decisions — most recently September 1948

14 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.

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WILBUR, J., Concurring.

¶1 I concur in the foregoing opinion. With reference to what is said concerning an insane delusion I concur because of the fact that the question as to what constitutes an insane delusion has heretofore been treated by this court as a question of law, and the court has defined, as a matter of law, what constitutes an insane delusion. In this, I think, the court has been in error. An insane delusion is one that is the product of a disordered mind produced because of the disorder. In other words, it is a symptom of a condition of mental' disease. The question of whether or not a person is suffering from mental disease is a question of fact to be determined in the light of increasing medical knowledge. To say that a person is not suffering from an insane delusion because his conduct in ref *676 erenee thereto does not measure up to a legal standard is, in my opinion, as fallacious as it would be to say that, as a matter of law, a man does not have syphilis if he does not have the symptoms which were recognized as indicia of the disease before the discovery of the Wassermann test, which, modern research has disclosed, practically demonstrates the existence or nonexistence of syphilis. Insanity is one of the least understood of the ailments which afflict humanity. It is a fertile field for investigation, and happily is receiving that investigation at this time. If the legal definition of an insane delusion can be upheld at all on principle, it is because of the fact that the courts regard other forms of insane- delusions, or of mental disease, as too difficult of proof as a basis for decisions by courts and juries. In that view, and in that view only, do I think that a legal definition of an insane delusion can be upheld on principle, and even in that case we ought not to close the door to such developments of modern research as may be able to make more certain proof of insanity. For illustration, the evidence in this case discloses that the decedent frequently spoke of his daughters as immoral. It is conceded that they were chaste and virtuous. It seems to me that in determining whether or not this should be regarded as the product of a diseased mind, or the outbursts of an unreasonable, eccentric, and angry man, there should be a wider latitude than that given by the accepted definition of an insane delusion. (Estate of Scott, 128 Cal. 57, [60 Pac. 527].) Doctor Ernest Dozier, who qualified as an expert in this case by testifying that he was doing special scientific investigation in human mental diseases at the Napa State Hospital, and had and continued to have for two years important medical supervision of a large number of insane persons, testified that the deceased was suffering from general paresis, was mentally unsound, and “harbored what seemed to me unsystematized delusions of persecution by all persons.” “An unsystematized delusion is one that is composed of elements that are more or less fleeting and changeable and which do not cohere so as to constitute a definite opinion in the patient’s mind.” (1 Wharton & Stille's Medical Jurisprudence, sec. 400.) Some of the symptoms of paresis are thus stated by the foregoing authority: “General paresis often begins insidiously and among its earliest symptoms are perversions of the moral faculties. These lead to all sorts *677 of lapses, some trivial, but some quite otherwise. At first there is a change of character and disposition. The patient may have spells of despondency, then elation. He does odd and unusual things. He is . . . extravagant with money. . . . His morals suffer. . . . He may be restless and irregular in his habits ... In some cases the patients start off aimlessly on a journey, without enough money. . . . The mental faculties are variously impaired. The judgment is weakened, the common sense lost, the logical processes curiously at fault. The patient has queer and absurd impulses and propensities; he becomes boastful, indifferent to appearances. . . . The emotions, or affections, are impaired, and the patient loses his normal fondness and care for his wife and children. A close observer may sometimes detect the beginning of delusions, such as mark especially the second stage. Occasionally, in the very early stage, he is conscious of feeling ill; he recognizes something is going wrong with him.” (Sec. 890, Id.) The decisions in this state seem only to recognize the systematized delusions. (Sec. 400, Id.; Estate of Scott, supra.) “It is characteristic of monomania or paranoia, as distinct from most other forms of insanity, that the delusions are systematized. The one other form of insanity in which this feature is seen to anything like the same extent is melancholia ; but melancholia is distinguished from monomania by the emotional depression. ...” (1 Wharton & Stille's Medical Jurisprudence, sec. 1028.) “Persecutory delusions may occur in several varieties of insanity.” (Id., sec. 1026.)

¶2 Courts no doubt have been driven to the rigid rule above mentioned by the proneness of juries to attempt to make wills for decedents in accordance with their own ideas of what is just and proper, seizing upon incidents of eccentricity as a basis for such decisions. But where the question as to whether or not a person is insane arises on a trial for insanity in proceedings for commitment to an asylum, experience has shown that inexperienced jurors fly to the other extreme. In this case we have evidence which would have justified a finding of the jury either for or against the validity of the will.

¶3 For the reasons in the main opinion and upon all points of law discussed therein, and for the reasons hereinbefore given in addition thereto, I concur.