Bracewell v. Bracewell’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

16 state decisions

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 16 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. “[T]he testator must have been of sound mind at its execution; and by this is meant that he must have been capable of understanding the nature of the business he was engaged in, the nature and extent of his property, the persons to whom he meant to devise and bequeath it, the persons dependent upon his bounty, and the mode of distribution among them; that he must have had memory sufficient to collect in his mind the elements of the business to be transacted, and to hold them long enough to perceive, at least, their obvious relations to each other, and be able to form a reasonable judgment as to them; and that he was not under the influence of an .insane delusion, either in regard to his property or the natural and proper objects of his bounty, which affected the disposition he was about to make.”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. In Re Estate of Graham