Garland v. Smith

28 S.W. 191, 127 Mo. 567, 1895 Mo. LEXIS 284
CourtSupreme Court of Missouri
DecidedMarch 19, 1895
StatusPublished
Cited by13 cases

This text of 28 S.W. 191 (Garland v. Smith) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Supreme Court of Missouri primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Garland v. Smith, 28 S.W. 191, 127 Mo. 567, 1895 Mo. LEXIS 284 (Mo. 1895).

Opinion

DIVISION TWO.

Gantt, P. J.

This is a statutory proceeding to-determine whether the instrument propounded as the last will and testament of Mrs. Persis Smith, of date-October 15, 1890, was in truth and in fact her last will. The cause was tried before Judge Valliant, both parties waiving a jury.

Mrs. Persis Smith, the testatrix, was the widow of' James Smith. She and her husband were old residents of St. Louis. They had no children but had amassed a large estate. In 1838, James Smith received into-his family a destitute, homeless boy named GeorgeConnelly, who was then about five years old. The boy was ever afterward, and now is, known in these pleadings as George Smith. He was reared and educated as-their own child, and finally graduated at Harvard University. George Smith, when a young man, went-to New Mexico, but returned to St. Louis about 1860. He acquired habits of intemperance, and became largely indebted in St. Louis and left St. Louis in 1865 for New York. Erom that time until the death of James-Smith, in 1877, no communication passed between George Smith ' and his foster parents. Indeed, the-record discloses that he himself regarded his treatment-of James Smith as the basest ingratitude.

James Smith, by his last will, gave one half of his property to Dr. ¥m. G. Eliot, the chancellor of Washington university. The other half he conveyed by trust [571]*571instrument to James S. Garland, a nephew of his wife, in trust for his wife, Persis Smith, giving her the right to dispose of it by her last will. At the time of James Smith’s death, his wife was sixty-seven years old.

Mrs. Persis Smith was a charitable woman and was lavish in her gifts to her relatives and to charitable and religious institutions. She .executed several wills and trust deeds providing for her relatives, in none of which did she make any mention of George Smith, prior to 1882. In July, 1880, George Smith, being in extreme poverty in New' York, appealed to two of his former friends in St. Louis for aid. ' These appeals were communicated to Mrs. Smith, who insisted on furnishing the necessary assistance herself, .and on the twenty-seventh day of July, .1880, began a correspondence with George Smith, which culminated in his coming to St. Louis, and resulted in Mrs. Smith changing her former, disposition of her property and granting and devising the great bulk of her estate to George - Smith. She became alienated from her nephew, Mr. James S. Garland, her trustee, and refused to-see him. She had lost largely by the failure of the Provident Bank and the Belcher Sugar Eefinery, and she attributed these losses to Mr. James S. Garland, as the record shows, most unjustly.

Mr. Garland became an invalid, and Mrs. Smith had her attorney procure from him a deed relinquish.ing his trusteeship while he was -in an asylum for treatment. When Mr. Garland learned his aunt, to whom he was devoted, had became, embittered against him, he brought a suit to set aside this relinquishment of his trust, and thereupon Mrs. Smith consulted counsel and executed the will contested in this action.

The grounds for assailing the will are, briefly, want of mental capacity to execute a will by reason of great age and diseased condition of her mind and body j [572]*572that it was obtained by means of fraud, deception and ■ imposition practiced‘upon her by George Smith; third, undue influence of George Smith.

Persis Smith had three brothers, Charles Garland, Benjamin P. Garland and John P. Garland, only one of whom, John P. Garland, survived her at her death, February 14, 1891. Charles Garland died in 1880, leaving four children, James S. Garland, John T. Garland, Nathan M. Garland and Jennie G. Hosmer, wife of James K. Hosmer. These last named four are the original plaintiffs in this suit. The defendants were John P. Garland and Mrs. Dale and Mrs. Wisher, the daughters of the deceased brother Benjamin P. Garland, and three children of John P. Garland, legatees in the will, Amelia Mantels, an old and faithful servant, also a legatee, and George Smith. The defendants JohnP. Garland, his wife Elizabeth and his daughters, Persis Jane Garland, Elizabeth Garland, and his son James, and Mrs. Wisher, and Mrs. Dale filed answers admitting all the allegations in the petition and joined in contesting the will, but have not appealed. Defendants Amelia Mantels and George Smith, by separate ' answers, denied all the allegations in the petition, and in addition thereto George Smith averred that.he was the adopted son of Persis Smith, and therefore plaintiffs were not the heirs at law and would not inherit even if Mrs. Smith died intestate.

After a trial consuming four weeks of time, the court gave the following declarations of law:

“1. If the court, sitting as a jury, believes from the evidence, that on the fifteenth day of October, 1890, Persis Smith was erroneously of the opinion that she was financially ruined, or that her estate was greatly reduced, and that she had very little property left; or, if the court, sitting ns a jury, believes from the evidence that said Persis Smith on the fifteenth of [573]*573October, 1890, had no definite or accurate knowledge of the amount or value of her property, and, by reason of said want of knowledge, executed on that day the instrument purporting to be her last will and testament ; or, if the court, sitting as a jury, believes from the evidence that at said time said Persis Smith was in such a bodily and mental condition as not fully to understand and comprehend with reasonable certainty the state and condition of her property, and the true state and condition of her nearest kin and heirs-at-law, any and all of these facts may be considered by the court as indicative of her mental condition, and from them it may be inferred that said Persis Smith was not of sound and disposing mind on-said day.

“2. If the court, sitting as a jury, believes from the evidence that at the time Persis Smith signed the ■paper purporting to be the will,, she was possessed with a false, exaggerated opinion and estimate of the value of the property she had previously settled upon her nearest kin, any or all of them, parties plaintiffs and defendants in this case; and was also laboring under a false and mistaken opinion of the nature and character of such settlement, and of the estates thereby created and vested in them; and if it also find that at the same time she was possessed of a false and exaggerated opinion and belief of the smallness of the amount and value of the property which she then possessed, and of the large extent of the losses she • had- sustained from the failure of the Provident Bank, and of the ruinous effects of such losses upon her estate, which false opinion and belief she was incapable of divesting herself of, but acted on them in executing the said instrument, as being true; and that these false opinions solely determined the disposition of her property contained in said instrument, then the court ought to find that said instrument was signed by her under a delusion and a mistake; [574]*574and that it is not the last will and testament of the said Persis Smith.

“3. The court, sitting as jury, ought to find that the instrument probated as the last will and testament of Persis Smith, in evidence in this case, was not the last will and testament of said Persis Smith, unless it finds from the evidence, that at the time the same was executed, she was possessed of sound and disposing mind and memory.

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Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
28 S.W. 191, 127 Mo. 567, 1895 Mo. LEXIS 284, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/garland-v-smith-mo-1895.