Town of Carlton v. State Department of Public Welfare

74 N.W.2d 340, 271 Wis. 465, 1956 Wisc. LEXIS 437
CourtWisconsin Supreme Court
DecidedJanuary 10, 1956
StatusPublished
Cited by16 cases

This text of 74 N.W.2d 340 (Town of Carlton v. State Department of Public Welfare) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Wisconsin Supreme Court primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Town of Carlton v. State Department of Public Welfare, 74 N.W.2d 340, 271 Wis. 465, 1956 Wisc. LEXIS 437 (Wis. 1956).

Opinion

Brown, J.

The controversy is over the application of sec. 49.10 (4) and (7), Stats., to the facts. The material parts of the section are:

“(4) Every person (except as otherwise provided in this section) who resides in any municipality one whole year *467 without receipt of aid under this chapter gains a legal settlement therein; and every person who resides in a county for one year without receipt of such aid who has not acquired legal settlement in a municipality acquires legal settlement in such county. Time spent by a person in any municipality while supported therein as a dependent person or while residing in a transient camp or while employed on any municipal, county, state, or federal work-relief project or program or as an inmate of any home, asylum, or institution for the care of aged, neglected, or dependent persons, maintained by any lodge, society, or corporation, or of any state or United States institution for the care of veterans of the military and naval services, or while residing or while employed on any Indian reservation over which the state has no jurisdiction, shall not be included as part of the year necessary to acquire or lose a settlement. No legal settlement shall be lost, acquired, or changed while a person is supported in whole or in part in any institution or foster home as a public charge. The time spent by any person while residing on lands owned, operated, or controlled by another municipality shall not be included as part of the year necessary to acquire a legal settlement in the town, city, or village wherein such lands are located, but shall be included as part of the year necessary to acquire a legal settlement in such other municipality.”
“(7) Every settlement continues until it is lost by acquiring a new one in this state or by residing for one whole year elsewhere than the municipality in which such settlement exists; and upon acquiring a new settlement or upon residing for one whole year elsewhere than the municipality of settlement all former settlements are lost.”

It appears to us that the town has construed “resides,” as used in the statute, as the equivalent of “lives in” or “exists,” and that this is erroneous. Residence, in this connection, is residence with the present intent of making the place one’s home, in contrast to mere presence there without such intent. It is so used in the statutes on divorce. (Sec. 247.06.) . . the residence must be actual and bona fide; animo manendi. No mer.e pretense of residence, no passing visit, no tempo *468 rary presence, no assumption of residence here pro hac vice only, nothing short of actual abode here, with intention of permanent residence, will fill the letter or the spirit of the statute.” Dutcher v. Dutcher (1876), 39 Wis. 651, 658. It is so used in the statutes dealing with the liability for care of an insane person, where the words “proper residence” in the statute were held to have “very much the same sense as the words ‘acquired domicil’ in some authorities; that is, the place where a person has voluntarily fixed his abode, not for a mere special or temporary purpose, but with the present intention of making it his home.” State ex rel. Wood County v. Dodge County (1882), 56 Wis. 79, 86, 87, 13 N. W. 680. It is so used in the statutes covering the appointment of guardians. Jurisdiction of such proceedings is vested in the county court of the residence of the alleged incompetent if he is a resident of the state. In Guardianship of Figi (1923), 181 Wis. 136, 138, 194 N. W. 41, we held that, “The abandonment of a residence once established and the acquiring of a new residence is to a large extent a matter of intention.” And in Waushara County v. Calumet County (1941), 238 Wis. 230, 298 N. W. 613, a poor-relief case, we stressed the question of intent when the person subject to relief went to the site of his job but left his family in the old home. We said (p. 234) :

“The fact that he himself remained voluntarily away for more than one year from Red Granite without receiving relief did not defeat his legal settlement at Red Granite if his residence at Rantoul was for less than one year. His family was at Rantoul for less than a year, and if his residence was that of his family under subs. (4) and (7) of sec. 49.02, Stats., his stay at Rantoul did not gain him a legal settlement or defeat his legal settlement at Red Granite.”

We conclude that the term residence as used in the statutes now in question is the equivalent of domicil as generally used by the courts and in the textbooks. It is that residence, *469 maintained in a municipality for a year without the receipt of aid under ch. 49, Stats., which establishes legal settlement there. Sec. 49.10 (4), Stats.

The domicil of a minor child, with certain exceptions not present here, is that of its father. Restatement, Conflict of Laws, p. 55, sec. 30; sec. 49.10 (2), Stats.

Mary and Ann Schlgl were twins, born in Chicago, July 10, 1892. The family moved to the town of Franklin, Kewau-nee county, while the twins were infants. In 1929, when the twins were thirty-eight years of age, the parents moved to the town of Carlton, Kewaunee county, and established there a home for themselves, Ann, and Mary. The twins were of arrested mentality, remaining at a mental age of about three years and have been incompetent their entire lives.

Restatement, Conflict of Laws, p. 63, sec. 40, states:

“c. Incompetent living with parent. If a person before becoming of age becomes mentally incompetent so that he is unable to choose a home and he continues to live with his parent, he does not become emancipated upon arriving at majority. If no legal guardian of his person is appointed and he continues to live with the parent, he has the same domicil as that of the parent so long as he remains insane. If he does not continue to live with the parent, his domicil remains in the place in which he was domiciled at the time of his separation from his parent.
“d. Except as stated in comment c, a person who is mentally deficient or of unsound mind for whose person no legal guardian has been appointed, does not acquire a new domicil in a place in which he lives.”

We conclude that, when the family moved to the town of Carlton, Mary and Ann acquired á domicil there which ripened into a legal settlement when they had lived there for one year without receiving aid under ch. 49, Stats. (They received no such aid except that from Kenosha county in 1953.)

*470 The twins’ father died February 23, 1950, still a resident of the town of Carlton. The mother had died previously. A competent sister of the twins, whose own home was in Kenosha, then made temporary arrangements for the twins to live in the home of a woman in Two Rivers, Manitowoc county, Wisconsin, and there they stayed from March 9, 1950, until on November 15, 1952, the sister, Mrs. Dostalek, was able to take them into her own home. The move to Two Rivers did not give the incompetents a domicil in that city. Comment d

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Bluebook (online)
74 N.W.2d 340, 271 Wis. 465, 1956 Wisc. LEXIS 437, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/town-of-carlton-v-state-department-of-public-welfare-wis-1956.