Noland v. Noland’s Empirical Analysis
1997
Citation profile
2 federal appellate · 70 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 74 later decisions — most recently September 2022 · most notably Hamilton v. Barrett (1999), Alphin v. Alphin (2005)
2 federal appellate · 70 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 Rad-Razorback Ltd. Partnership v. B.G. Coney Co. · Rose v. Dunn · Holaday v. Fraker · Greenwood v. Wilson · Riddick v. Streett
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 74 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“While the majority does not decide whether the trial court correctly shifted the burden to the trust’s proponent, it nonetheless concludes that if the burden of proof did shift, the trial court was clearly erroneous in finding that the proponent failed to meet his burden to prove Wesley Noland’s mental capacity beyond a reasonable doubt. . . . Assuming for purposes of capacity analysis, as does the majority, that Jerry Noland procured and benefitted from the 1991 trust instrument, the burden shifted to him, to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Wesley Noland possessed the requisite testamentary capacity. This shifting burden marks a significant departure from what is required from a proponent in a “typical” will-contest case. . . .”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the dissent“Because we reverse this case on the basis of Wesley Noland’s mental capacity and free agency, we need not address the issue of whether the burden of proof was improperly shifted to the appellants. We assume for purposes of this analysis, as the trial court found, that at least one of the appellants, Jerry Noland, procured the Wesley E. Noland Trust and that the appellants all benefitted from this procurement. With this assumption, a presumption that the trust was the result of undue influence arises under our caselaw and the burden of proof then shifts to the proponents of the trust to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Wesley Noland had both the mental capacity and freedom of will to render the trust legally valid.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage“Complete sanity in the medical sense is not required if the power to think rationally existed at the time the will was made. Furthermore, our own law is clear that despite any mental impairment, the testator may execute a will if he is experiencing a lucid interval. The time to look at a testator’s mental capacity is at the time the will is executed. However, proof may be taken as to the testator’s condition both before and after the will’s execution as being relevant to his condition at the time the will was 19executed. This court has upheld mental competency at the time of the execution of a will even in the wake of evidence of some mental deterioration.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage
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.