Court Opinion

ID: 7815317
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2022-09-07 17:34:02.725241+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T16:30:35.077817
License: Public Domain

J. Seaborn Holt, J., dissenting. It is true that a donor has the right to dispose of his own property as he chooses. It is equally true, however,' that such a right is not unlimited. When it is shown that the maker of a will lacks the mental capacity to make a will, or that he was subjected to undue influence in making it, then the will should be declared invalid. After carefully considering the evidence presented, I am convinced that K. W. Bullion, at the time the will in question was made — April 16, 1954, was not mentally competent to dispose of his property and was the victim of the undue influence of a shrewd, designing, scheming and an admittedly immoral and unprincipled woman, appellee. Here we are dealing with a mentally weakened man, easily influenced, who was in his late fifties who fell under the spell of a woman in her middle twenties, not related to him in any manner, and who willed his entire estate of about $50,000 (except $2,500 to the Catholic church) to her and gave nothing to appellants, who were his nephew and niece, who had his love and affection until appellee intervened, and would have inherited his property had he died intestate. Among the tests of testamentary capacity the most commonly used and pointed out by this court are: (1) Was this a natural or unnatural will; (2) what was the testator’s physical condition; (3) what was the opinion of the family physician; (4) what was the opinion of the subscribing witnesses; (5) what was the lay opinion by his intimate friends and family; (6) how had the testator conducted his business and affairs at the time or prior to the execution of the will; and (7) had the testator undergone marked personality changes prior to the execution of the will. To me this was a most unnatural will. “. . . evidence of an unnatural disposition of his property by a testator is admissible as a help to be considered with the other evidence as tending to show an unbalanced mind or a mind easily susceptible to undue influence. In other words, it is a help which the jury may consider in connection with the other evidence in passing upon the soundness of mind of the testator,” Howell v. Miller, 173 Ark. 527, 292 S. W. 1005. The present will was unnatural. Until appellee came on the scene the evidence showed that the testator had a warm affection for his niece and nephew and in previous wills he had made his nephew, •Bruce, his heir. The evidence shows that Mr. Bullion’s physical condition had deteriorated until he was almost helpless at the time of the execution of the will. His lifelong family physician, Dr. Munn, testified without reservation that he was incompetent when he made the will, that he lacked mental capacity to make a will, that he had been treating Mr. Bullion for twenty years or more. Mr. Bullion became almost a recluse. He had few friends with the exception of Tom Moore, Dawson Hawkins and Judge LeCroy. His physical condition was so bad that he needed constant attention from his family physician. There is no question about the high qualifications of Dr. Munn as a physician. One of our outstanding authorities on wills, Mr. Schouler, in his book on “Wills, Executors and Administrators,” % 97, page 106, uses this language: “Where one’s mental condition appeared to his medical attendant suitable for the testamentary act, or the reverse, shortly before or after the will was made, testimony to this purport should carry great weight.” Other witnesses testified that he walked with a peculiar tottering gait, had to have assistance in getting in and out of cars, needed constant attention ; had to have a nurse with him at all times during the day and a colored boy at night, was unable to control himself physically. Appellee, Mullins, testified that at the time of the execution of the will he was so agitated and upset he was unable to sign his checks or list his household expenditures, and it was three or four months before he was able to resume signing his cheeks. In the present case there were two attesting witnesses, one a close and lifelong friend of the testator and the other a casual acquaintance. Dawson Hawkins, one of these witnesses, a man of unquestioned integrity and who had known the testator, Mr. Bullion, for a decade or more, and was very close to him, testified that in his opinion Mr. Bullion did not have mental capacity to make a will; that he did not possess the capacity to know the condition and extent of his property; nor to know the just deserts of those to whom he would normally leave his property. He further testified that he witnessed the will to humor Mr. Bullion, and that Mr. Bullion did not know what he was doing at the time the will was executed. The other subscribing witness stated that he could not say whether Mr. Bullion was competent or not, that he was merely an acquaintance of Mr. Bullion. Here the testimony is undisputed that Mr. Bullion had been living in immoral relations with appellee for many years prior to the execution of the will, at the time it was executed, and until his death. She brazenly admitted writing him the most obscene letters on sex (too obscene to be presented in any court record) and to using every method at her command to excite and accommodate the sexual desires of this sex crazed man. There is no evidence that she was in love with him, ever had any intention of marrying him, and to me it is obvious that her one and only motive was to induce him, in his weakened mental and physical state, to will all of his property to her, a stranger to the blood. Just here it may be said that the Catholic priest to whose church the will provided a gift of $2,500, frankly testified that he did not think Mr. Bullion was competent to make the will in question and apparently his church has made no demand for this $2,500. Thiel, Special Adm. v. Mobley, 223 Ark. 167, 265 S. W. 2d 507, “Mental weakness, though not to the extent of incapacity to execute the instrument designated, ‘may render a person more susceptible of fraud, duress, or undue influence, and, when coupled with any of these, or even with -unfairness, such as great inadequacy of consideration, may make a contract voidable, when neither such weakness nor any of these other things alone, or of themselves, would do sol” Alford v. Johnson, 103 Ark. 236, 146 S. W. 516, ". . . the proof of such undue influence may be made, not only by direct and positive testimony, but by facts and circumstances from which such undue influences may be reasonably inferred. And this proof is permitted to take a very wide range. There must be free agency on the part of the testator, but in order that there may be such free agency there must be a state of mind on his part free to act, and if, therefore, he is restrained or coerced unduly by the relation he bears to, or the influence exercised by, one over him in the execution of his will, his free agency is to that extent destroyed. . . . There is a distinction between influence exerted through a lawful relation and that exercised by one occupying an unlawful and adulterous relation. Much less evidence will be required to establish undioe influence on the part of one holding wrongful and meretricious relations with the testator. . . . The testimony adduced in this case was not only sufficient to warrant a finding that there existed wrongful sexual relations between the testator and the proponent of this will, but it was sufficient also to prove a course of adulterous conduct between them that continued for years. . . . The jury were warranted in finding that the testator was influenced during the entire latter portion of his life by the appellant, who obtained an ascendency over him that dominated him. . . . Under these facts and circumstances, we are of opinion that the jury were warranted in finding that the proponent of the will, who had lived with the testator in adultery for all these long years, exercised over him an influence that destroyed his free agency and caused him to forget the relation and deserts of his own flesh and blood, and to make her in effect the sole beneficiary of his bounty. ’ ’ This case is on all fours with the case at bar. In addition, the proof in this case appears to be undisputed that Mr. Bullion dissipated at least $150,000 during the last few years of his life, $100,000 of which is unexplained. I am convinced, on the record before us, that the great preponderance of the evidence shows that Mr. Bullion was so weak physically, and his mind so weakened by disease, senility, and insane delusions, that he was incapable of executing a will on April 16, 1954. I would reverse the judgment with directions to deny the will to probate.