Opinion ID: 2338603
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 8

Heading: The testatrix's own declarations.

Text: Certainly the person most competent to know whether the testatrix was subjected to coercion, intimidation and undue influence was the testatrix herself. What did she herself say, and how can her own statements be ignored as they are in the majority opinion? She told Mrs. Byrd, her maid, who was also her daily companion and confidante, that she regretted having made changes in her will and wished she could make a new one; that she had done something she wished she could do over, but that Mrs. May would not allow her to make another will; that she had been forced by Mrs. May to change her will! She cried as she made this latter statement. She told Mrs. Tucker, one of her nurses, that she regretted something she had done and wished she could undo it but that the Mays would not let her. One of her previous struggles with her daughter was when the latter had practically hammered her into giving her a power of attorney. She had told several of her nurses that if she gave Mrs. May a power of attorney she would not have a cent left, and when she was finally obliged to give in, she handed the executed instrument to Robinson, her chauffeur, saying, Well, Dennis, here I go. And to Mrs. Carney, the friend who served her as a beautician, she said: They will make me do what they want now. After the session with the Mays in the late January already described, Mrs. Tucker, her nurse, testified that she was crying and said to her, You don't know what I go through. Is all this the language of one who has been peacefully persuaded by argument into making suggested provisions in her will? On the contrary, it is the voice of the testatrix herself, a voice now from the dead, saying to her intimates around her, not easily or lightly but with sobs and obvious mental distress, that she was dominated and bullied into doing things that she did not want to do. And she said the same thing in regard to the very will now in question. A point is made by the proponents of the fact that the testatrix lived for fourteen months after the execution of the will and they therefore argue that she could, during that period, have changed it had she so desired. But apart from the fact that she suffered an ever increasing physical and mental deterioration in that last year of her life during which she was twice hospitalized, once in a comatose state, the real answer is, of course, that she remained all that time under the same continuous domination and constant surveillance of her daughter as before. The shackles once placed upon her could not thus be broken. She herself said that Mrs. May would not allow her to make another will.