Betts v. Betts

395 S.W.2d 673, 1965 Tex. App. LEXIS 2530
CourtCourt of Appeals of Texas
DecidedOctober 18, 1965
DocketNo. 7528
StatusPublished
Cited by5 cases

This text of 395 S.W.2d 673 (Betts v. Betts) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Appeals of Texas primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Betts v. Betts, 395 S.W.2d 673, 1965 Tex. App. LEXIS 2530 (Tex. Ct. App. 1965).

Opinion

CHAPMAN, Justice.

The subject matter of this case involves a contest of a will. Appellee, Arthur Betts, filed an application to probate the alleged last will and testament of his father, W. P. Betts, deceased, in the County Court of Deaf Smith County. His half-brother, appellant, Virgil Betts, another son of the deceased, filed the contest. The County Court admitted the will to probate and appointed appellee independent executor without bond, as the will provided.

Appellant appealed the case to the District Court. Appellee filed a motion for summary judgment, with supporting affidavits. Appellant filed an answer to the motion, with opposing affidavits. Following a hearing on the motion, the trial court granted Arthur Betts’ motion for summary judgment, admitted the will to probate and appointed appellee independent executor, as provided for in the will. Appeal is perfected from such judgment upon two points of error. The first point asserts error of the trial court in * * * “holding that contestant’s evidence did not raise a material issue of fact as to whether or not the will sought to be probated had been revoked.”

The contentions that the record raises a material issue of fact are based on the opposing affidavits of La Noe Kinkier and C. W. Dodson and wife, Emma Dodson. The objections to the merits of the opposing affidavits have their bases in Section (e) of Rule 166-A, Vernon’s Ann.Tex. Rules of Civil Procedure, where it is stated:

“Supporting and opposing affidavits shall be made on personal knowledge, shall set forth such facts as would be admissible in evidence, and shall show affirmatively that the affi-ant is competent to testify to the matters stated therein.”

Mrs. Kinkier is the full sister to the contestant and the half-sister to the proponent. Before making the affidavit, she had specifically disclaimed all interests she might have been entitled to in the estate of her deceased father, her deceased mother and her deceased step-mother.

Her affidavit stated her father told her in 1939 he had willed * * * “the Shallo-water place to contestant in consideration of his working it nine years without pay and that he would not revoke the will; that in January 1963 he told her he had revoked contestant’s will because Virgil had refused to divorce his wife; and that in July 1963 he told her he had made a new will giving all his property to a sixteen-year old girl in Hereford and asked her what she would think if he married a girl of that age.”

No contention is made on appeal that any purported will made to Virgil should have been probated but only that the state[675]*675ment in the affidavit to the effect that testator had made a will leaving all his property to an unidentified sixteen-year old girl in Hereford he had given some consideration to marrying raised a fact issue as to whether the will which was probated had been revoked.

The will probated was dated the seventeenth day of June, 1963. The testator died on May 22, 1964, at the age of eighty-five. Supporting affidavits establish that the probated will was found in the deposit box of the deceased testator, W. P. Betts, in the First National Bank of Hereford following his death. There is no question raised as to the will having been signed, declared and published with all the solemnities required by law and no question is raised in the record as to the testamentary capacity of the deceased at the time the will was signed, declared and published.

We hold the naked statement in the affidavit of Mrs. Kinkier to the effect her father told her in July 1963 that he had made a new will giving all his property to an unidentified sixteen-year old girl in Hereford, unsupported by any other proof of revocation of the probated will constitutes no probative evidence of revocation.

Such affidavit does not make any statement showing personal knowledge on the part of the affiant of the existence of a will made subsequent to the probated will, nor is there any statement from which such inference could have been drawn such as to bring the affidavit within the requirement of Section (e) of Rule 166-A, V.A. T.R. The affidavit only shows personal knowledge of a legal conclusion of an eighty-four year old man that he had made a will leaving all his property to an unidentified sixteen-year old girl. The record is completely silent as to any such will having been made under the solemnities required by law for a will and the alleged statement of the deceased is simply a statement of a legal conclusion as distinguished from a statement of facts from which that conclusion should be deduced.

“ ‘An affidavit based on hearsay and statements contained in affidavits that are but mere conclusions of law are insufficient to warrant the overruling of a motion for summary judgment.’ ” Sparkman v. McWhirter, Tex.Civ.App., 263 S.W.2d 832 (writ refused). Mere conclusions of law will not suffice. Gaines v. Hamman, 163 Tex. 618, 358 S.W.2d 557.

Our Supreme Court in McElroy v. Phink, 97 Tex. 147, 76 S.W. 753, 755, has said:

“When the declarations of an alleged testator consist, in effect, of the naked assertion that he has made a will, or that he has revoked one that is proved to have been executed, they are generally excluded; and we think such action is proper, for the reason that such declarations are merely statements of a legal conclusion and not a statement of the facts from which that conclusion should be deduced.”

In holding to the same effect the San Antonio Court of Civil Appeals in Sien v. Beitel, 289 S.W. 1057, 1059 (N.W.H.) considered the admissibility of a statement of a witness to the effect that she had conversations with the deceased in which he stated he * * * “ ‘had made a later will and had remembered my mother in the will.’ ” The court said:

“Such testimony was wholly incompetent for any purpose here. No satisfactory evidence had been offered to show the existence of any such will or the terms thereof, and no such general statement of declarations of a deceased person can be shown for the purpose of proving that the necessary requirements of so solemn an instrument as a will not accounted for, which the law so carefully required to be done under its formalities in its execution and then to be revoked only in the manner prescribed by the same law. Article 8285, R.S. 1925. It is not [676]*676permissible to accomplish that purpose by the testimony of witnesses as to the naked declarations of the testator, unsupported, that he [had] made another will or revoked a particular will. Such statements would merely be statements of conclusions, without a statement of facts upon which such conclusions are based.”

In considering another will contest the Texarkana Court of Civil Appeals in Covington v. McDonald, Tex.Civ.App., 307 S.W.2d 335, has said:

“There was no testimony in the record of any one ever having seen a written revocation of the will in question—no written revocation was offered in evidence nor were the contents of any allegedly lost written revocation ever testified about or offered in evidence or shown to have been executed with the formalities prescribed by law. Nor was any subsequent will produced or offered in evidence.

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Bluebook (online)
395 S.W.2d 673, 1965 Tex. App. LEXIS 2530, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/betts-v-betts-texapp-1965.