Clark v. Wallmark

129 P.2d 969, 55 Cal. App. 2d 85, 1942 Cal. App. LEXIS 23
CourtCalifornia Court of Appeal
DecidedOctober 19, 1942
DocketCiv. No. 13605
StatusPublished
Cited by9 cases

This text of 129 P.2d 969 (Clark v. Wallmark) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering California Court of Appeal primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Clark v. Wallmark, 129 P.2d 969, 55 Cal. App. 2d 85, 1942 Cal. App. LEXIS 23 (Cal. Ct. App. 1942).

Opinion

SHAW, J. pro tem.

Appellants, who are two of the six children and heirs at law of Annie Clark, deceased, filed, before probate, a contest of a document offered for probate [87]*87as her will. After trial by the court sitting without a jury, an order was made admitting the wiE to probate, from which this appeal is taken.

The wiE purports to be both a holographic and a witnessed will. The grounds of contest are, that the wiE “is not such a document that complies with the law of California relating to holographic wEls,” that it “was not executed and attested with the formalities required by law,” that at the time of its execution the testatrix was of unsound mind, and that its execution was procured by the undue influence of the other four chüdren of the testatrix and of the wife of one of them. All the allegations of the contest on these matters were denied and the trial court found them to be untrue.

On the question whether the will was properly admitted as a holographic wiE, the above quoted aEegation is not very enEghtening as to the nature of appellants’ objections to it, but in argument two points are presented; first, that the wiE is not dated, and second, that it is not entirely written and signed by the testatrix, The Probate Code clearly provides, in section 53, that a will, to be holographic, must be “entirely written, dated and signed by the hand of the testator himself. ’ ’ The cases have firmly established the rule that the requirement of a date includes the day, month and year, and that if any one of them is omitted or not written by the testator the document cannot be admitted to probate as a holographic will. (26 Cal.Jur. 859, 860; Estate of Vance, (1916) 174 Cal. 122, 124 [162 P. 103, L.R.A. 1917C, 479]; Estate of Maguire, (1936) 14 Cal.App.2d 388, 389 [58 P.2d 209].) The date stated need not, however, be the actual date of execution of the will. (Estate of Vance, supra; Estate of Fay, (1904) 145 Cal. 82, 84 [78 P. 340, 104 Am.St.Rep. 17]; Estate of Wilkinson, (1931) 113 Cal.App. 645, 649 [298 P. 1037].)

Appellants in their brief state that the date appears in the wiE as “April 1-1-4 1940” and argue that from these figures no date can be ascertained. The printed transcript on appeal represents the date to be “April 114 1940,” and the respondents in their brief assert that it is “AprE 14, 1940.” In view of these conflicting statements we have caused the original wiE to be sent us from the trial court for our inspection. The whole document is written in an uncertain and wavering hand. At the top of it, where a [88]*88date would usually be, appears “April 14, 1940,” with a character interposed between “April” and “14” to which nothing short of a photographic reproduction could do exact justice. Except for this interposed character the date is complete and unquestionable. Inspection of this character indicates that a sort of vertical curlicue about half the height of the “1” in “14” was first written and then a nearly vertical straight line of about the same height as the “1” was drawn through this curlicue. The trial court might properly find, and we assume it did find, from inspection of the will, that this character resulted from an effort to correct a previous error of penmanship by striking out a meaningless form accidentally or otherwise wrongly put on the paper, and that such character was to be altogether disregarded in passing upon the will. There is nothing in the code definition of a holographic will as one “entirely written, dated and signed by the hand of the testator himself” which requires that his handwriting be perfect, or forbids the correction by him of any mistakes he may make in the course of writing his testamentary disposition. (See Succession of McCay, (1928) 166 La. 681 [117 So. 772].) The testimony indicates that the testatrix’ signature may have been placed on the will on April 18, 1940, four days after the date stated in the will and as long after the body of the will was written; but if this be the fact, it does not prevent the will from being given effect as a holographic will, under the rule above stated.

On the question whether the will was written by the testatrix’ own hand, the case is simply the ordinary one of conflicting evidence. Two witnesses produced by the proponents testified that they saw the testatrix writing the will, one of them saying she saw only a part of it being written. Three witnesses, two of them daughters and one a daughter-in-law of the testatrix, testified that they were familiar with her handwriting, that all of the will above the signature was in her handwriting, and that the signature itself was genuine. One of contestants’ witnesses also conceded that the signature was genuine. Two witnesses testified that the testatrix wrote the signature in their presence, the body of the will having been previously written. The proponents produced witnesses who expressed the opinion that neither the body of the will nor the signature was in the handwriting of the testatrix. The trial court’s resolution of this conflict is binding here.

Below the testatrix’ signature to the will are the sigua [89]*89tures of two persons, designated as “witnesses,” with no further attestation clause, and the statement of a notary public over his signature that the will was “signed before me,” with the date and venue. None of these matters was in the handwriting of the testatrix. However, they were obviously not intended to be a part of the will, and their presence on the same paper does not detract from its character as a holographic will. (In re Soher, (1889) 78 Cal. 477, 479 [21 P. 8]; Estate of Tanner, (1939) 33 Cal.App.2d 186, 189 [91 P. 2d 170].) Since the will was properly executed as a holographic will, we do not consider the points made against its attestation by the witnesses.

Coming to the ground of contest that the testatrix was of unsound mind, we find that it also was decided against appellants on conflicting evidence. Six witnesses, of whom four were children of the testatrix, testified that she was of sound mind at or about the time the will was executed. One of these witnesses was a physician who was called in to attend the testatrix on April 14, 1940, and continued to see her once or twice a day until her death on July 14, 1940. He testified that in his opinion she was of sound mind “from the latter part of April until some time in June, 1940,” and that she “in the beginning had a fairly keen mind.” Appellants produced several witnesses who testified to contrary opinions, but neither that fact, nor the further fact that two of respondents’ witnesses, about the same time the will was signed, filed petitions seeking appointment as testatrix’ guardian on the ground that she was incompetent, affords anything more than a basis for an argument on the weight of the evidence, on which we may not review the trial court’s decision.

Neither do we find any lack of evidentiary support for the trial court’s finding that the will was not the result of undue influence. We do not have here the usual case where someone to whom undue influence is charged profits by the dispositions made in the will.

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Bluebook (online)
129 P.2d 969, 55 Cal. App. 2d 85, 1942 Cal. App. LEXIS 23, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/clark-v-wallmark-calctapp-1942.