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387 S.W.2d 1

Mix v. Smith

Court of Appeals of Kentucky

Decided February 12, 1965

Court of Appeals of Kentucky · decided 1965-02-12

Relies on Fortney v. Elliott's Administrator

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1965-02-12

How this case has been cited

Cited by 5 later decisions — most recently July 2008

5 state decisions

3019651970198019902000decided

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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STEWART, Judge

¶1(dissenting).

¶2I find myself unable to agree with the majority opinion. The great preponderance of the evidence introduced as to Will White’s mental competency, including his doctor’s testimony, established he was suffering from an acute condition of senility, and did not understand the consequences of his act, when he executed the deed. The chancellor found, almost solely upon the basis of the testimony of the attorney who drafted the deed, that Will White was rational when the conveyance was executed.

¶3Although the opinion is transparently scant as to the testimony produced in respect to Will White’s mental ability to know what he was doing at the time, there is no evidence whatsoever in the opinion which points up the fact that the procurement of the deed was free from the exercise of undue influence.

¶4In this case a confidential relationship existed. When Will White became helpless, his niece moved in with him and, shortly after he was released from the hospital, where, as the opinion states, “he was disoriented, and unable to relate himself to his invironment,” an attorney appears on the scene and the deed transaction was consummated.

¶5*4According to Hightower v. Hightower, cited in the opinion, the burden was upon the niece, the beneficiary under the deed of conveyance, to show no undue influence was exerted to secure this deed from a helpless old man. As held in Fortney v. Elliott’s Adm’r., Ky., 273 S.W.2d 51, 54, this must be proven by clear and convincing evidence. There is a complete absence of evidence in this respect.

¶6HILL, J., concurring.

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