Case ID: nc_130/html/0638-01.html
Source: Caselaw Access Project
Author: {"author": "Montgomery, J.", "license": "Public Domain", "url": "https://static.case.law/"}
Date Created: 2024-08-24T03:29:51.129683

IN RE SMITH.
    (Filed June 10, 1902.)
    PENSIONS — Pensioners — Personal 'Representatives — Acts 1899, Chap. 198.
    
    A warrant for a pension issued after death of pensioner, does not become a part of assets of deceased pensioner, but must be returned to the State for cancellation.
    ActiON by Samuel Smith and others, pensioners-, heard by Judge W. B. Council, at Chambers, at Hickory, N. C., January 29,1902. From a judgment for the pensioners, the State Board of Pensions appealed.
    
      
      Avery & Avery, for tbe pensioners.
    
      Robert D. Gilmer, Attorney-General, for tbe State Board of Pensions.
   Montgomery, J.

Tbe matter in controversy was submitted without action and tbe agreed facts are few and simple. Tbe several applications of tbe deceased pensioners were duly approved by tbe Pension Board of Burke County, in July, 1901, and tbe same were certified as being “correct and just” under tbe act, and thereupon tbe State Board of Pensions, on tbe first day of December following, not knowing that tbe pensioners bad died since tbeir applications bad been certified and filed, issued in tbeir names pension warrants under tbe Act of 1899, and tbe same are now in tbe bands of tbe Register of Deeds of Burke. Tbe question for decision is whether these warrants are assets of tbe estates of tbe deceased pensioners, or whether they must be returned to tbe Department of tbe Auditor for cancellation. If pensions are granted in aid of tbe pensioners for tbeir future support for tbe year ensuing, then these warrants are to be returned to tbe Auditor ; if they are granted to reimburse and compensate tbe pensioners for money paid out by them for tbeir past support, then tbe warrants are assets of tbeir estates. Pensions are personal to tbe pensioners and they are not granted alone on tbe consideration of meritorious services rendered tbe public, but they are granted because of tbe necessities, condition and circumstances of tbe pensioners. They are not prizes or rewards, but they are charitable gifts — because of indigent circumstances of tbe pensioners. If any authority were needed for tbe correctness of that definition it will be found on a reference to Section 8, of Chap. 198, of the Act of 1889, which reads as follows: “That no officer, soldier, sailor or widow holding a national, State or county office which pays annually a salary or fees in tbe sum of three hundred dollars, or wbo owns, in bis or ber own right, or in the right of bis wife, property of the value of five hundred dollars as assessed for taxation, or who is receiving aid from the State under any act providing for the relief of soldiers who are blind or maimed, shall be entitled to any of the benefits of this act.”

The purpose of a pension, then, is -to enable the pensioner to live upon, and by means of the gift, and it is not intended as a reimbursement for-money already expended by the pensioner in his support. We think, therefore, that the position of the State Board of Pensions that pension warrants under our statute and generally, are for the ensuing year, is- a correct one; and as the pensioners were dead when the warrants were issued, it follows that the warrants should be returned to the Auditor for cancellation. If the pensioners had been living at the time the warrants were issued, but had died before they had received the warrants, then the warrants would, under Section 13 of the act, have been assets of the estates of the pensioners. The statute in substance provides for the issuing of only one warrant to each pensioner annually — and that for the whole amount of the pension, and as we have s-aid, for the ensuing year; and we can not see that Chapter 228 of the Acts of 1895 can be of any force or effect.

Upon the agreed facts the judgment should have been for the State Board of Pensions, and that the warrants should be returned to the Auditor.

Reversed.