Connor's Widow v. Administrators of Connor

10 La. Ann. 440
CourtSupreme Court of Louisiana
DecidedJune 15, 1855
StatusPublished
Cited by5 cases

This text of 10 La. Ann. 440 (Connor's Widow v. Administrators of Connor) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Supreme Court of Louisiana primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Connor's Widow v. Administrators of Connor, 10 La. Ann. 440 (La. 1855).

Opinion

Slidell, C. J.

In the settlement of the estate of the deceased, H. L. Connor, a controversy has arisen between his widow and his children. It is one of those family disputes with which our judicial annals so painfully abound, and which seem a necessary and unamiable consequence of our peculiar laws on the subject of the conjugal relations and of inheritance. In the perusal of this voluminous record the suggestion constantly recurs to the disinterested mind how much better it would have been if these parties had arranged their conflicting pretensions in a spirit of filial and parental affection. As they have chosen to pursue a different course, we are to apply the rules of law in the distribution of the estate.

Mr. Connm• was a native and resident of Mississippi. Ho lived and died in that State. In 1824 he became affianced to the plaintiff, Susan E. Balcer, a minor, residing in Louisiana, and under the guardianship of her tutor, Alexander Pm'ler, a resident of Louisiana. After completing her education at the North, she was placed on her return to Louisiana in the family and under the care of her sister, Mrs. Ker, a resident of the parish of Concordia, in this State. The consent of her tutor was given in these words:

“I, Alexander Porter, jr., of the city of New Orleans, duly appointed tutor by the Court of Probates in the parish of St. Mary, Attakapas, in the State of Louisiana, to Susan Balcer, minor, daughter of the late Joshua Balcer, deceased, do in my quality aforesaid, by these presents, consent that the rites of matrimony be solemnized between Henry L. Conner, of Adams county, in the State of Mississippi, and the said Susan Balcer; and I sign these presents, and affix my seal thereto, in the eity of New Orleans, this 4th day of May, 1824, in order that the same may serve in time and place.

[l. s.] Alexander Porter, Jr.”

It was intended that the marriage should be solemnized at the house of Mrs. Ker, but in consequence of the overflow of the Mississippi at the time, it was found inconvenient for their Mississippi friends and the Mississippi magistrate, [447]*447Judge 'Winston, to reach Mrs. Ker’s house in Concordia, and the place of solemnization was changed to the house of another sister in Mississippi. Immediately after the marriage in May, 1824, they went to live at Oak Hill, in Adams county, Mississippi, the residence of Mr. Connor's' mother. Here they continued to live until Mr. Connor’s landed estate in that county, owned at the time of his marriage, was increased hy the acquisition of lands there, inherited hy his brother. He erected upon this estate a commodious dwelling, embelished it with an extensive garden and ornamental grounds, and lived, until his death, at this seat, which he called Berkley, in a style of comfort and elegance. The slaves and other personalty of his Mississippi estate amounted at his death to about $61,000, and Berkley was a tract of about 1200 acres.

In 1841 he purchased a valuable plantation in the parish of Concordia, which was kept in successful cultivation until his death, and was then inventoried, with its slaves, etc., at $58,456 75. A very comfortable dwelling-house was built upon this plantation, and occasionally the husband and wife visited the place, and tarried for some time upon such visits, Berkley, however, always remaining their home, and Mississippi their domicil. There is evidence that he occasionally spoke, after his marriage, of an idea of going to Louisiana to live. One witness not only says she had often heard him speak about going to Louisiana to live, but that he contemplated at the time of his marriage a removal to the State of Louisiana. But upon a fair review of all the testimony upon this subject in connection with the surrounding circumstances, and especially the continuous and consistent acts of the parties, which speak more forcibly than casual words, wo are satisfied that there was not in the mind of Connor, at the time of the marriage, or subsequently, a settled purpose to live in Louisiana, much less any ante-nuptial understanding that such should be the base, and it is certain that his vague views as to a change of domicil never even approached a realization. Mississippi must unquestionably be.eonsidered not only the matrimonial domicil, hut the matrimonial domicil contemplated at the time of the marriage.

It further appears that after the marriage,'and after Mrs. Connor had taken up her abode in Mississippi, the husband and wife received from Judge Porter $4452 24, being the amount of her patrimony in her tutor’s hands, which sum the husband converted to his own use. The wife has participated in the distribution of the Mississippi estate, and occupies the Berkley mansion under the assignment of dower, hut with means incompetent to sustain the establishment in its former style, or to live otherwise in the comfort and luxury to which she was habituated before widowhood.

I. The most important inquiry in this cause is whether the claim by the wife of one-half of the Louisiana estate, as widow in community, is well founded.

The proposition is advanced upon the ground that, hy the Code of 1808, which was in force at the time of entering into wedlock, every marriage contracted in the territory of Louisiana superinduced of right, partnership or community of acquets or gains, such being the express provision of article 8 of section 4 of ’ that Code; that although in this case the marriage was actually celebrated in Mississippi, she was a Louisiana ward, and was constructively and de jure married in Louisiana; that it was the ante-nuptial intention of the spouses to make Louisiana their residence, and mere accident, and the post-nuptial purpose of her husband, made Mississippi their actual residence; hut to which act petitioner, then a minor, and without disposing will, could give no assent. These grounds, it is argued, are set forth in the petition and sustained by the evidence.

[448]*448In these views of the law and facts we do not concur.

It is true that an accident changed the mere place of solemnization from Louisiana to Mississippi. But that this change was made against the wish of the tutor does not appear, and cannot reasonably be inferred. It is impossible to infer from the evidence in the cause that the house of Mrs. Ker, in Concordia, was originally selected, or the house of Mrs. Metcalf, in Mississippi, subsequently adopted as the place of marriage, with reference to any question of property or marital right. The choice in both cases seems to have been suggested by mere considerations of convenience and decorum. The language of the tutor’s consent indicates no restrictions to Louisiana as the place of celebration, and does contain matter suggestive of the inference that no such restriction was intended. Under the then existing laws and jurisprudence of the State of Louisiana, this marriage would have been considered a Mississippi marriage, even if an accident had not prevented its solemnization in Louisiana, in Ford's case, decided while the Code of 1808 and the Spanish laws were still in force, the question was whether the slaves of the wife, who was married in Mississippi, passed to her husband by the laws of that State, or remained her paraphernal property by virtue of the law of Louisiana, which, was contemplated at the time as the matrimonial domicil, and within a reasonable time became so actually.

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Bluebook (online)
10 La. Ann. 440, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/connors-widow-v-administrators-of-connor-la-1855.