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79 Miss. 133

Wilson v. Jourdan

Mississippi Supreme Court

Decided March 15, 1901

Mississippi Supreme Court · decided 1901-03-15

From the chancery court of Lee county. Hon. Henry L. Muldrow, Chancellor. Jourdan, appellee, was complainant, and Mrs. Wilson, appellant, was defendant in the court below. From a decree granting the complainant relief in part, Mrs. Wilson appealed to the supreme court, and Jourdan prosecuted a cross appeal, without bond.

Key passage — most relied on by later courts

“[c]onveying all is evidence of absence of hope of recovery, but also evidence that because of it, the party means the gift to take effect at once, unconditionally and irrevocably.”

quoted by 1 later decision, including Estate of Johnson v. Johnson

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1901-03-15

How this case has been cited

Cited by 5 later decisions — most recently December 2017

5 state decisions

20190119101920193019401950196019701980199020002010decided

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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Whitfield, C. J.,

¶1delivered the opinion of the court on the merits.

¶2The evidence shows clearly that it was the intention of the donor that the gifts of property, both real and personal, should take effect immediately and irrevocably, and that the gifts were fully executed by a complete and unconditional delivery at the time. Whenever this is the case, the mere fact that the donor is in extremis, expects to die, and does die of that illness even, does not affect the validity of the gifts, because they were, in such case, gifts inter vimos, and not gifts causa mortis. To hold otherwise would be to declare that no one could make a deed to land when sick of his last illness, no matter how clear the intention to make a deed conveying a present interest absolutely and unconditionally. The test, whether the gift is one inter vivos or one causa mortis, is not the mere fact that the donor is in extremis, and expects to die, and does die of that illness, but whether he intended the gifts to take effect in prm-senti, irrevocably and unconditionally, whether he lives or dies. This is the correct view set out in 14 Am. & Eng. Enc. L., 1014, 1015, par. 6. See, specially, Carty v. Connolly, 91 Cal., 15 (27 Pac. Rep., 599); Hatcher v. Buford, 60 Ark., 169 (29 S. W. Rep., 641, 27 L. R. A., 507); Henschel v. Maurer, 69 Wis., 576 (34 N. W. Rep., 926); McCarty v. Kearnan, 86 Ill., 292. “The absence of any hope of recovery, ’ ’ says J udge Cassoday in the Wisconsin case, ‘ ‘ is persuasive to show the intent that the deed should take effect in prmentij ’ ’ and the same observation may be made where all is conveyed, as here. Conveying all is evidence of absence of hope of recovery, but also evidence that, because of it, the party means the gift to take effect at once, unconditionally and irrevocably.

¶3The fallacy in the argument for appellee and cross appellant is the assumption that, wherever the facts show that the donor is in extremis, expects to die, and does .die of that illness, then, necessarily, without more, and without regard to the real intent and actual delivery of the deed, the gift must be taken *142to be one causa mortis, and bence, as to land, void, since, of course, land is not the subject of a gift causa mortis. But, as shown, this denies to a donor in extremis the power, under any circumstances, to make a gift of land inter vivos by deed.

¶4It follows from these views that, on the direct appeal the decree is reversed and a decree will be entered here for appellant, and that, on the cross appeal the decree is affirmed. So ordered.

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